


Honor Compels Me

by angel_deux



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dany doesn't go mad but I'm also not a Dany stan so please don't expect that, Does ANYONE know what Brans powers are? Because I dont, F/M, I can't tell you how easy it will be to NOT click on this if you're a stark stan who hates Jaime, I don't follow the plots of Seasons 7 and 8 at all but let's call it an AU of them anyway, I try to write plot for the first time in this fandom, Mind the Tags, Slow Burn, also i don't care about westeros politics so if that's your jam just be prepared for disappointment, also related: not a targ stan, also this will be Very Long, and 7 while we're at it, enemies to penpals to buddies: the Jaime and Sansa story, every fic needs at least one unabashed bedsharing chapter and mine is chapter 52, fuck season 8, in the home stretch now so reminder: THIS IS A BIG JAIME POSITIVE STORY, just don't read it my dude there's a pandemic on go learn a new language or something, many canon mistakes because I am pretty bad at research, namely mind this next tag:, some twincest but it's mostly in the past, this story will never withdraw even a quarter of an inch from Jaime Lannister's ass so jot that down, very minor Arya/Gendry and Missandei/Grey Worm, warning for occasional suicidal ideation in Jaime and Robb's chapters especially, you know how people tag for Dark Characters? can i tag for Light Robb? Robb's super chill okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-02-16 04:42:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 91
Words: 335,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21502051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_deux/pseuds/angel_deux
Summary: When Brienne is sent to Riverrun to speak with the Blackfish, she finds herself with another Stark to protect. For the oaths she swore to his mother, she will see Robb Stark safely home. Even if it means standing against Jaime Lannister to do it.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister & Sansa Stark, Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth, Jon Snow/Sansa Stark, Robb Stark & Brienne of Tarth, Robb Stark/Daenerys Targaryen
Comments: 4266
Kudos: 2597





	1. Jaime I

**Author's Note:**

> All right. Here we go. 
> 
> For some absurd reason I decided to actually write one of the first ideas I had for this fandom. I also decided to write it for nanowrimo, which means I've spent the past 19 days writing 120k of fic and I'm not even near the end of the first draft yet! For that reason, this won't be appearing on any sort of posting schedule until I finish the first draft. I know I usually post things once a day, but that will NOT be happening with this. The chapters are all fairly short, but there are a lot of them, and I am only human.
> 
> I put it in the tags, but I really want to be clear with this: Dany is a main character and I explore a lot of her motivation for wanting to rule and I think I'm very fair with her. But I'm not a stan and I do examine her previous actions under a lens of conquering, so if that's a major turn-off for you, I want to warn you off upfront. She's still one of the good guys, and I like the way I've written her, but I know there are a lot of people with very strong feelings about her, so I thought I would be better off with a blanket disclaimer here.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime encounters Brienne when the siege of Riverrun is over.

The siege was over.

The Lannisters and Freys were taking control of Riverrun.

And Brienne was still in the castle somewhere.

Jaime refused to run. If he did, it would draw the more obsequious of his men to him like large metal moths to the flame that was the chance to win the favor of their one-handed commander. He kept his expression level, and he walked as quickly as he dared past his men and through the underbelly of Riverrun as the Lannister and Frey armies rounded up the Tully household in the courtyard of the castle above. The tunnel beneath was quieter than the courtyard had been, and the sound faded further as Jaime followed it. It seemed the most likely place to find her; the Blackfish had not been in the courtyard to greet them, and it would be so very _Brienne_ , to try and help the man escape.

 _Surely she can’t be so much a fool_. But of course she could. He _knew_ she was.

There were shouts from deeper in the tunnel. A clash of swords, growing louder, then going quiet quickly. His stomach tightened. _So much for a peaceful surrender._ He checked to make sure that none of his men had followed him, and the tunnel was empty behind him. He broke into a jog.

He _needed_ Brienne to be safely away. The Lannister forces were distracted with ensuring the compliance of the hostages, but it wouldn’t take long for more men to come down this way and block off the tunnels to prevent escape. He couldn’t let her linger. He knew that she _would_ linger if Tully gave some fool, impassioned speech about honor and duty, because Brienne of Tarth was too easy to sway with pretty words like those. She would be moved by the old man’s courage, and she would be killed by the old man’s courage. Jaime could not allow it.

He scarcely understood _why_ he was so determined to save her. He had warned her. He had all but begged her in his tent, their eyes locked as they spoke about the possibility of battle, but of course she was still here. She never listened to him. Even after they formed something of a respect for each other on the road from Harrenhal, she was always so sure she knew better than him. Always so _suspicious_ of every well-intentioned piece of advice or comfort he tried to offer. She had stopped calling him _Kingslayer_ eventually. Offered him the title of _Ser Jaime_ , and seemed to recognize how much it meant to him. She believed too much in his goodness, and she trusted him more than she should have. _Still._ She had her own ideas of honor, and they would not allow her to listen to him when it counted the most. And it all came to this: Brienne very _honorably_ getting herself caught in a siege she should be far away from.

And Jaime, scrambling through a dimly lit tunnel, desperately trying to clean up the mess.

The _mess_. Jaime Lannister _was_ the mess. The Lannisters and the Freys, snatching the ancestral home of the Tullys from the fucking _Blackfish_ : a man who had long been a hero of Jaime’s. How had it gotten to this point? How had Jaime _allowed_ it to get to this point? He lost his sword hand and returned to Kings Landing to find that he had lost a lot more than just the five fingers and the palm to hold a blade in. He thought he could make something of it. Use it as a reason to be better. Become again the boy who had worshipped Brynden Tully and who had dreamed of knighthood and all it entailed. Protecting the innocent instead of solely extending his efforts to shield his guilty family from the consequences of their choices. Meeting Brienne had made him remember a time before _Kingslayer_. It made him want to _try_. Why had he stopped?

 _Cersei_ , he knew. It all came back to love. It always had, with him. It just felt more disappointing this time. He had been so sure that he could change. Maybe that had been naïve. Maybe a man like him _couldn’t_ change.

Perhaps he was always fated to grow into a monster, no matter what the boy he was had wanted him to be.

He increased his pace and ducked his head past a wooden beam. The tunnel grew slightly wider, though it grew no taller. The walls became rough-hewn rock. The torches were more spread out, and darkness yawned between them. There was a dead man quite suddenly at his feet, in the shadow. Lannister armor. Another up ahead. Jaime tripped past them, his golden hand scraping along the rock wall as he placed it there for balance. He stumbled as the shadows messed with his perception. There was another dead man, just ahead. He wondered if the blades had been driven home by Brienne or the Blackfish. It could have been either. He had seen Brienne take down three men before. She made it look as simple as it had once been for _him_ , before he lost his hand and more than half of the skill that had come with it.

She really was a remarkable woman, for all she was also a stubborn fool.

He rounded a corner, and at last he saw her. She looked bigger than ever in this small, narrow space. Her frame filled the tunnel the same way it had filled his tent, leaving it feeling empty when she had gone. She was speaking to the Blackfish. Her voice was too low to hear, but the urgency was obvious. She was tugging on his arm. The insane woman was trying to get him to abandon the castle. Jaime sighed, a performative exhalation that carried down to them. They both looked in his direction. Brienne’s expression was impassive, but he could see the surprise in her features. Surprise, and wariness, too. She eyed his left hand near his sword.

 _Honor compels me to fight for Sansa’s kin,_ she had said in the tent, and Jaime could see the way her own words were haunting her now. _To fight you._

Jaime had no intention of drawing his blade, but Brienne stepped forward until she was fully in front of Brynden Tully. She pulled her sword from its scabbard. _Oathkeeper_ , he thought. _And she means to keep my oaths for me, if I’m too much a Lannister to keep them myself_. _Even if it means running a sword through my gut._

“What are you doing?” he asked her.

“Ser Jaime, please,” she said, and she set her stance wider.

“I will not surrender,” the Blackfish said at the same moment.

“I was speaking to the lady,” Jaime replied. He was trying for sarcastic, trying to pretend that the daggers the Blackfish glared in his direction weren’t piercing. There was sweat on his brow; it trickled down his temple. He dared not wipe it away. “Brienne, I can’t let you take him.”

“And I can’t let you stop me,” Brienne replied. “I told you it might come to this.”

Jaime continued to move closer. He still didn’t draw his sword, but he kept his hand on it, just in case. In case of _what_ , exactly? Did he really think he could draw against _Brienne_?

Perhaps he could, if it came to it. He’d like at least to die with sword in hand, if only to spare the poor girl the trauma of striking down an unarmed man she once may have thought of fondly, despite all his many faults.

“And I told you that I hoped it wouldn’t,” he said softly. Brienne’s sword did not waver, but her expression did. He couldn’t look away from her eyes.

“It doesn’t have to,” she said. It was almost a whisper.

“My lady,” the Blackfish warned her gently, still close behind her. “We must go.”

“ _Uncle_.”

Jaime’s eyes left Brienne’s for long enough to see the figure that appeared in the tunnel behind her. It was impossible, yet Jaime would know the boy anywhere. He spent a year chained up in the Stark camp, visited periodically by the King in the North with his great grey beast beside him. Jaime had done his best to comfort Brienne when they received word on the road that the idiot boy had died with his mother and wife at that cursed wedding, but he hadn’t exactly mourned the loss himself. He had heard tales from the Freys. Bragging, endless tales about cutting the boy’s head from his body and sewing his wolf’s on in its place. The idea made Joffrey laugh and Tywin and Cersei smile and Tyrion wince while Jaime tried to think of nicer things so he didn’t have to imagine it.

“No,” he said, forgetting to be calm or wry or amused or whatever it was he was trying to achieve here. “Brienne…”

He could almost hear the songs already. The Return of the Wolf. The Young Wolf Rises. Triumphant stories of the boy who never lost a battle but who lost the war for love, born again to take revenge. Sentiment was already firmly turned against the Lannisters. Cersei may not have wanted to hear it, but Tommen held to his throne only through what remained of the realm’s fear of their father. When the smallfolk heard that Robb Stark was still alive despite all the Lannisters had done…

“Get in the boat,” Brienne said over her shoulder.

“We can’t wait forever,” Robb warned her. Jaime couldn’t stop looking at him, hoping to see an illusion. A trick. This was some Tully cousin they hoped to use as a decoy. Some scheme to win favor in the war the Starks were fighting against the Boltons.

No. Stark turned his poisonous glare in Jaime’s direction, and it was _him_. He was so much his mother and father at once. Ned looking at him, judgement in his gaze, as Jaime sat on the throne with Aerys dead at his feet. Catelyn trembling with fury, staring down at him, after he told her that he had pushed her son from that tower. The hatred and the judgement and the disdain were nothing new, but it was perhaps more potent now, with Brienne standing between them.

“It won’t take long,” Brienne said, and both men vanished into the darkness behind her. Jaime had begun to advance again, but he stopped when she spoke the words. He wanted to feel betrayed. He wanted to say _“Brienne”_ in a small, hurt voice, like a much younger man. A child asking for answers the Septon couldn’t give. _“Why_? _”_

“I must warn you I’ve been practicing,” he said instead. Brienne’s eyes closed for more than a blink, a half-second to center herself, but then they opened again, made glimmering and orange by the torchlight. He used to think it was funny that she could be so much a maiden in the body she had been given. A soft heart beneath all those muscles and her massive height. Some cruelty of the gods made her fall in love with poor, dead Renly, and they made her too much man for most but not man enough to secure the heart of the one she wanted. He didn’t think it was funny anymore.

“As have I,” she said. _Her maiden’s heart is breaking_. The thought came unbidden, and Jaime shoved it aside. He stepped closer. His left hand still held his sword, but still he did not draw it. She met his eyes, and her chin raised as she looked at him.

“You’d do it, wouldn’t you?” he asked. He could hear the Blackfish barking orders at someone down at the water’s edge. They meant to make their escape on a boat, then. He suddenly wanted her on it. Away from him. _Take the bloody Stark boy and go_ , he wanted to sneer, but he didn’t. When he did speak, his voice was very quiet. He felt oddly short of breath. _Removed_. “For the Starks, you would strike me down. Kill me as you’re supposed to have killed Renly.”

If that was too close an acknowledgement of her care for him, Brienne didn’t show it. She didn’t get defensive as he thought she would. Her maiden’s heart might be breaking, but her warrior’s facade did not crack.

“I didn’t kill Renly,” she said. “Stannis did that. And I killed Stannis.”

A boast from anyone else. From her, it was a warning. A reminder, too, that he had struggled to fight her even when he was whole—the irons and the year of captivity had been bad, but they weren’t a missing sword hand. If he tried to fight her now, she would cut through him like wet sand. The best he could hope for would be delaying the inevitable until his men could come to his aid, but then he would have to take her in, and Cersei would…

No. He released the hilt of his sword, and he took a demonstrative step back.

“You would have done it,” he said. Brienne slid Oathkeeper back into place with a look that was mingled fear and relief at once.

“Yes,” she said.

“Good,” he replied. “Now go. Before my men realize you’ve taken my most valuable political prisoner and one we didn’t even know existed.”

There was still a glimmer in Brienne’s eyes as she nodded and turned to go. He also caught the slight edge of a smile. The smallest upturn of her lips. She thought he had done a good and honorable thing, of course. She used to think the worst of him beyond all rationality, and now it seemed to be the opposite. Despite all evidence, she was too quick to assume his honor and his good intentions. If only his sister’s affections were so easy to win over with a few gifts.

He followed her at a distance. Brienne settled into the boat. Her squire was there already, preparing to row. At least she had listened to Jaime about _that_. The Blackfish and Robb Stark were in the boat as well, camouflaged in Tully-blue cloaks that looked black in the darkness.

If Cersei knew what Jaime had let slip away…

He raised his golden hand when Brienne turned back to look, when they had already begun to melt away into the fog. Brienne hesitated, but then she raised her hand as well. He stood and watched until he could no longer see them.

Next time, he wouldn’t be so lucky. Cersei was always calling him a fool, and perhaps she was right. He was a fool to think he could simply meet Brienne of Tarth as friends. The honorable woman and her absurd fondness for the oathbreaker. As long as he continued to stand against the family she had sworn herself to, _she_ would continue to stand against _him_.

It would have destroyed her to kill him, but she would have done it, and he would have deserved it. Perhaps _she_ wouldn’t have felt honorable to do it, but the rest of the world would have cheered her. The Kingslayer slayed at last by a woman as virtuous as she was ugly. The songs would last for a thousand years, and the singers would never know how either of them truly felt for each other. How could they? He and Brienne hardly understood themselves.

He returned to his men. He said nothing of Brienne, nor of the Blackfish. He accepted the news of Tully’s apparent escape with an incline of his head and some distracted comment about Tully’s slyness. When they asked if they should go after him, Jaime shook his head and said something about not wanting to waste resources on one old knight. He sent for Bronn, instead, because Bronn was the only one he could trust, terrifying as that was. Brienne would need horses and provisions if she was going to make it back north in time to assist her lady.

In the morning, he and his army would begin the return trip towards Kings Landing. Towards Cersei. And Jaime would pretend that he was as eager to get back to her as he had been only hours ago.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for this chapter: Broken Parable by Bear's Den.
> 
> come follow me on tumblr at angel-deux-writes to hear more of my screaming thoughts about Jaime and Broken Parable by Bear's Den, because I apparently never shut up about it.


	2. Robb I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brienne rows Robb and the others away from Riverrun, and Robb considers what could wait for him at Winterfell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had very good intentions of posting, like, once a week until I finish the first draft. Obviously those have been ignored, which I really shouldn't be surprised at! 
> 
> Again: I have no intentions of allowing this to become a habit! There is no posting schedule! Maybe if i say it enough, I'll train my brain to listen!

Everything had been easier when Robb was dead.

According to his mother’s uncle, he never _was_ dead. His injuries had bled him nearly dry, but they hadn’t killed him; _you fainted_ , the Blackfish had claimed in his dry, disdainful tone. _That’s all._

In the chaos, Brynden had been able to sneak Robb away from the Twins, carried by a few loyal men. They ran into little trouble on the road, because they had fled north instead of south. Robb had been cared for. Watched closely as he clung to life. _Treated better than you deserved_ was implied in Brynden’s quiet disgust. Implied, too, was Robb’s survival. _You never died. You fainted. That’s all._ But Robb knew better.

The memories had faded, but there was a time when he remembered clearly: their faces. The dead. The gods. Watching him. There were whispers in fog, and there were trees. Heart trees, with their white faces and their red leaves and their silent judgement. Not one, like the one in the godswood at Winterfell, but many. Thousands spread out, a white and haunting wood, rows and rows of them half-hidden in mist. He had tried to speak. His chest had still burned from the arrows. He had remembered his losses, and he had wept.

And then he was alive again.

It was a week since he had lost the war, and his mother’s uncle was standing over him.

“You’re alive,” Brynden had said. He was hard and unrelenting. His voice spoke clearly of his opinion of Robb’s continued survival after all his mistakes. Robb felt like a child in his bed. It was the first time he had truly hated himself for choosing what he had. That feeling would not fade with time. “You’re the only one.”

He had left the room, then, likely assuming that Robb wanted to be alone to cry for the lost war and the lost wife and the lost mother, but Robb had already done that in the wood, and he found that he had no more tears. Instead, there was a nothing inside him. A blankness.

For another week, they stayed in Greywater Watch. Robb’s physical strength came back quick enough, but his mind wandered whenever he was left alone for too long, and sometimes in the middle of conversation he would stop, frozen, and forget what he had been saying. There were times Brynden or his father’s friend Howland Reed would have to repeat his name several times before he realized they were speaking to him, though he had been looking directly at them, and though he had been hearing every word they spoke.

_Why am I here?_ he often asked the gods, but they never found it fit to answer. Not even in the dreams when he could feel them near.

He saw his sisters in his dreams. He saw his brothers, too. He saw his mother dying, and his wife dying, her unborn child cradled in her stomach beneath her bloody hands. He saw and tried to speak, but could only watch and choke on desperate groans.

Bran, once, turned and looked directly at him, and he spoke Robb’s name. He was taller than he had been. Almost a man. Robb didn’t dream of him again.

“I was dead,” he would say to Brynden often.

“You were not,” Brynden would reply.

* * *

“Howland led us the quietest route back to Riverrun,” Brynden was saying to Lady Brienne. She manned the oars without complaint, though she had been rowing for hours. Brynden had tried to take her spot, but she persisted, and it was probably a good choice. They were making impossible time.

Robb remembered her from before, of course, though they hadn’t had much opportunity to speak. She had been his mother’s shadow. A quiet, intense woman who would have gladly died for Catelyn Stark. He would have liked to have seen her fight, but he had been ahead in the tunnel when she stopped the Lannister men from following.

“I’m surprised you were able to get in,” Brienne said. Her voice was as steady as the rest of her. It matched her exactly.

“It was under siege, but not quite to the extent you saw tonight. We got in the same way we just got out. The Freys have always been incompetent.”

“I’ve heard it said,” Brienne agreed. Her low voice was just amused enough to be comforting, though Robb had so far been afraid to truly meet her eyes. He would see judgement there, he knew. He would see loathing. Brienne had sworn herself to his mother, and Robb’s selfish choices had seen his mother killed.

He had not forgiven himself. Brynden hadn’t forgiven him, either. It was easy to imagine that he never would. Robb expected that it would take Brienne just as long.

Brynden glanced back at him briefly, to see if he was awake. His expression was difficult to read in the darkness, and he didn’t say anything. Just turned back around to continue speaking to Brienne.

“We stayed in Riverrun because Robb needed to recover, and then it was a matter of not wanting the Freys to know he was alive. They would have redoubled their efforts, and by then the north had already fallen to the Boltons. We had nowhere left to turn. There weren’t enough people to take back Winterfell.”

“There still may not be,” Brienne reminded him grimly.

“Perhaps,” the Blackfish agreed. “But the Bastard of the Night’s Watch is meant to be a fearsome fighter, and there is still love for the Starks in the north. They may surprise us.”

Brienne lapsed into silence, and Robb watched her back, clad in that deep blue armor. It was handy camouflage as they rowed through the night, though sometimes the moonlight caught on her pale hair and gleamed.

She looked like something out of a myth. The strong warrior maid rowing the unworthy king to safety.

She rowed competently, the way she did everything. The boat was stable, with minimal rocking. Her squire Podrick had managed to fall asleep. Robb was meant to be sleeping as well, but found it impossible. He grew easily fatigued since the injuries he sustained at the wedding, but now he found that freedom coursed through him, and his eyes could not stay closed.

His gaze drifted to the sword that Brienne wore at her hip. The lion’s head pommel, the glittering ruby that was its eye. It winked at him every time it caught the moonlight, teasing him, reminding him of the way the Kingslayer had looked at Brienne when she drew that sword to use it against him.

It would take a much stupider man than Robb Stark to miss the possibility that the Kingslayer had _given_ Brienne of Tarth that sword. Valyrian steel was quite a gift to give, especially to a woman sworn to one’s enemies, but why else would it be so clearly marked as _Lannister_? The belt she wore it on had lion heads and sunbursts: a marriage of their house sigils.

Robb had learned from Brynden that the Kingslayer found his way back to Kings Landing eventually. Short a hand, the stories said, and with the Tarth heir in tow. Arya and Sansa had not been traded; whether Catelyn’s plan would have worked was impossible to say. Robb still doubted it, but the Red Wedding had already happened, and there wouldn’t have been anyone for the girls to be traded _to_. He hadn’t heard anything of Lady Brienne since, and he had assumed she was still in the dungeons somewhere, if she hadn’t been executed. He had to wonder now at the fact that she had been allowed to leave. Had it been repayment for ensuring the Kingslayer’s return? Had they any idea she was going to use their gifts and her granted freedom to find Sansa? Perhaps she had made them believe she was on their side. Or perhaps in her naivety she _had_ meant to work with them, only to learn the truth of their monstrousness from Sansa herself. Robb could not question Brienne’s honor or her dedication to the oaths she had sworn to his mother, but he _could_ question everything else.

What were her allegiances to the Kingslayer? What were her allegiances to the Lannister house? She had not allowed Jaime Lannister to take Robb and Brynden. She had drawn her sword and stood against him. Perhaps that should have been proof enough, but Robb no longer trusted in the way he used to. No alliance could be counted on completely. People were too unpredictable. They had too many disparate wants.

And Robb of all people knew how easily the best intentions of the most honorable person could be twisted in on themselves and made into unforgivable errors.

Brienne was the next one to turn and check on him. When she saw that he was still awake, her eyes lingered on his. Her blank expression was maddening. Did she see? Did she know about his fears and his doubts? When she turned again to face the front, her shoulders were higher, tense. She was as awkward as he remembered, but she was more self-assured. Harder, too.

“My sister,” he said, finally forcing the words out. “You said she’s safe?”

Brienne hesitated. Her shoulders came up even higher, like she meant to disappear behind them to protect the back of her neck from his gaze.

“She was safe when I left her,” she said. “As safe as anyone _could_ be.”

Robb nodded, though she wasn’t looking at him. Some days, he could barely remember what Sansa sounded like. He could remember her face. He remembered the way she felt in his arms when he hugged her the last time, in the courtyard at Winterfell. She had been smiling, then, giddy and excited, and that was how he always remembered her, though he knew that her smile would have faded some, after all she had been through. Same as him. But her voice escaped him. Even in his dreams, she was silent.

“And Jon?” he asked.

“Jon Snow is a good man,” Brienne said. “I didn’t have much time to know him, but your sister trusts him. That’s enough for me.”

She lapsed into another uncomfortable silence, and this time, Robb allowed it to keep. He closed his eyes for a time, but that didn’t last. He watched the stars instead as the boat continued down the river.

How much did Sansa know about his choices? Did she know that Robb refused to trade the Kingslayer for she and Arya? Did she know that their mother had to _steal_ the Lannister heir and send him to Kings Landing for hope of a trade with only a single loyal woman for a guard? Did she know that Robb _punished_ Catelyn for it? Kept her locked away in her tent like a child because she tried to save the daughters that Robb would not?

There were times as he recovered in Greywater Watch that Robb thought about Jon in particular. It was easier to look back at his choices after the war was lost, because there was no more pressure to make the right ones. The wrong steps had already been taken. He had already chosen poorly.

How different would things have been if he had agreed to an official trade of Jaime Lannister for Sansa and Arya? How different would they have been if he had married Roslin Frey the way he was meant to? His mother would still be alive. Talisa would still be alive. The north wouldn’t be under the control of the Boltons, and Sansa wouldn’t have been married twice to their family’s enemies. He had failed in every way as a king and as a brother, and he would think about Jon.

What would Jon have done? If it was Jon in charge of their northern army and the strategy of war, what would _he_ have chosen?

Jon and Sansa were never close, before. Sansa had absorbed their mother’s hostility towards Jon in a way none of the other siblings had, and she maintained a polite veneer that was still a form of _distance_ between herself and her half-brother. Still, Robb had a hard time imagining that Jon would have left her in Kings Landing if he thought there had been any choice. Even if Arya hadn’t been involved. Even if it hadn’t been his favorite sibling. Jon would have done _anything_ for his family. There had been a time when Robb would have said the same about himself. When had that stopped being true?

On their third day in Greywater Watch, Howland Reed had asked to speak with Robb. He had sat in the empty chair beside Robb’s bed, and he had checked Robb’s bandages before he began the conversation. Howland was a small, curious-looking man who smiled often, if a bit distantly. He spoke of his children but never introduced them. He asked after Robb’s dreams too often to merely be coincidence. He unsettled Robb generally, but he was a kind man, and he had risked much to take Robb in.

On that day, Howland said, “did you know that I knew your father? During the rebellion?”

Robb had known that much, but he hadn’t known the rest. The story that followed was impossible, but Robb had no reason to think that Howland was lying, so he believed him instead. Howland described the bloody battle at the foot of the Tower of Joy, and how every man but he and Ned were killed. He described the babe in Ned’s arms. He revealed a truth that could have been horrible and could have been devastating, except for the fact that he described it so gently that Robb could only think of what _he_ would have done. If it was Sansa or Arya dying in that birthing bed, and it was _their_ child who needed to be protected, would he have made the choice his father had?

Jon wouldn’t have hesitated. Jon would have claimed that child as his own. He would have raised that child as his own. Jon was going to war for a sister who never fully loved him. A sister who wasn’t even a sister. And what had Robb done but wallow and grieve and recover too slowly to be of any use to anyone?

* * *

They reached the shore, and Brienne led them to an inn where they spent too much gold on questionable stew and lice-ridden beds. They sat in the common room to eat, all of them with hoods pulled up. They weren’t the only people trying to avoid attention. The Riverlands was the safest place to be if you were running from one of the wars and the armies that waged them, as long as you didn’t mind the bandits.

The people who had nothing to hide spoke loudly, longing to be overheard, because they carried news. The surrender of Riverrun to the Lannisters. The Freys being rewarded for their betrayal of the Starks. News traveled fast.

Podrick secured horses for them somehow, and they left the inn early the following morning.

“What if Lannister sends his men after us?” Brynden had pointed out, and Brienne had nodded and agreed to leave while it was still dark, though Robb could tell from her expression that she didn’t believe he would.

Remembering the way the Kingslayer had looked at Brienne, all surprised hurt, when she drew her sword, Robb didn’t think he would send anyone either. 

And there was, too, the matter of the horses. The mare that Podrick led to Brienne snuffled at her ear as if she knew her, and the saddlebags were stuffed with provisions. Brienne smiled when she looked inside one of them, though she tried to hide it. There was a crimson blanket rolled up behind the saddle. It was a finer bedroll than the blue ones that the rest of them had been given.

Podrick was a good lad, and a good squire, but he would have had to pay a fortune for four horses and that kind of gear. And _where_ would the boy have even found those kinds of provisions in the middle of the war-torn countryside?

_Did_ he _send the horses, Lady Brienne_? Robb longed to ask. He didn’t. Brynden would likely refuse the mounts if he suspected they came from the Lannister camp, and Robb didn’t feel like walking.

They rode hard through the second day. Robb had slept poorly at the inn, and he listed in his saddle, still not used to so much exertion. He had made a habit of sparring nearly every day in Riverrun to get his strength back, but he no longer had the heart for it, and he still drifted at odd moments. A listlessness that came over him. A lack of care, where it seemed pointless to keep trying. His sword arm wasn’t as strong as it used to be, and his constitution was even weaker. An infection in his recovery bed, Howland had claimed. Something in the lungs. But Brynden had been doubtful, and Robb was doubtful, too. It wasn’t his lungs that troubled him. It wasn’t his lungs that stopped working at odd moments and left him feeling shattered. It was just _him_ , his mind, his guilt and his fractured sense of self. It wasn’t something that had such an easy cause. He had failed, and he was guilty for it. He was still healing, and still growing stronger, but it would take more time.

He had dreamed of Jon, the night before. Jon staring at him and judging him. Standing between he and the rest of his siblings. Protecting them from the brother who failed them, who didn’t love them enough, who had given up on them.

_Please_ , he tried to say. _I’m home. I’m sorry._ But Jon had only growled like a warning dog, and he drove Robb back and back and away, into the white forest with the fog and the accusing eyes of the old gods. 

* * *

Days passed in riding. More days, and more inns. The story of Brynden’s escape had spread. They were saying he swam down the river to get past the siege lines, and that Edmure Tully had laughed in the Kingslayer’s face when he heard. The tale-tellers all crowed about the Blackfish living up to his name. Even Brynden couldn’t help but crack a smile to hear their mirth at the Frey army’s misfortunes.

The news from Riverrun was welcome, but it was _nothing_ compared to the news from the north.

The Battle of the Bastards, they were calling it. The Bolton force demolished outside Winterfell. Ramsay Bolton killed. Sansa Stark and Jon Snow taking back Winterfell with a cobbled-together army of wildlings and northern loyalists who refused to turn their backs on the family they once swore allegiance to.

They said, too, that Jon Snow had died, and had risen, and had now been named King of the North.

Robb was glad that Jon and Sansa had not needed him. He was glad that they were able to take back Winterfell without him. He was glad that they were safe.

He was glad, and yet he needed to leave the inn to stand in the snow outside to catch his breath.

He heard footsteps behind him eventually. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but it had grown colder, and the sun was fully gone. He expected his uncle, but when he turned, it was Brienne who had followed him. She held to the pommel of that sword the way she always did. Like it was a reminder of who she was. But who was she? What did she need the reminder of?

“I’m fine, Lady Brienne,” he said.

“Your uncle thought I should check.” 

Brienne smiled at him. It was small, her lips barely rising at all, but he could see the way her eyes softened. It made the smile seem bigger than it was.

“Your sword,” he said, and the smile faded. She held it tighter. “The Kingslayer gave it to you.”

She hesitated, but answered, “yes.”

“Valyrian steel, and a Lannister pommel at that.”

“It was made for Ser Jaime. He gifted it to me when he tasked me with finding your sister.”

“Tywin Lannister must have shit himself when he found out.”

“I’m not sure he ever knew.”

“I hope he did. He would have hated it.”

“He would have.” She smiled a bit at the thought. She stepped closer to him, and he could see that she was worried. “You should come back inside. It’s cold.”

“You don’t know what to call me,” he noted. “You never use a title, because I have none.”

“Your grace,” Brienne said, but she hesitated, and he knew he was right.

“I’m not king anymore. That’s Jon.”

“For now,” Brienne conceded. Robb frowned at her.

“You think I would take his crown?”

“No,” Brienne said. She hesitated again, but she didn’t say _‘your grace’_ at the end, like he had been sure she would. “The lords had a choice to make. Between Lady Sansa and King Jon.”

“A girl and a bastard,” Robb elaborated for her, because he knew she wouldn’t say it. Brienne nodded. “You think they made the wrong choice,” he said. Brienne was plainly unhappy to be asked, but he knew it to be true.

“Your sister is strong in the same way your mother was,” she said. “And your mother would have been a good queen.”

“She would have been,” Robb agreed. He felt more like himself, his breathing steady and no longer quite so panicked. He could even give her a crooked smile. “I was so furious with her when she gave you the Kingslayer.”

“I imagine you would have been,” Brienne said. Her smile was more visible, now. Quietly proud. “But I was sworn to your mother, not to you.”

At that last bit, her words were harsher. Defensive. Worried, perhaps, that he still held some grudge. He didn’t want to tell her that he found it difficult to hold on to _any_ feelings for long these days. Anger came in sharp, stabbing points but then left him, ebbed out of him, settled back to blankness. He wasn’t the rash boy he used to be.

“I should have listened to her from the start,” he said. “Perhaps the trade wouldn’t have won me any favors with my men, but everyone knows the Lannisters pride themselves on paying their debts. It might have worked.”

“They never had Arya,” Brienne reminded him gently, but he knew that she agreed with him. “And Sansa is safe now. Back at home.”

“Yes,” Robb admitted. He kept the bitterness out of his voice, but only barely. _She suffered for years in the meantime because I failed to help her._ “Thank you.” Brienne nodded, and she turned to head back into the inn. Robb followed her.

Sansa was safe, and back at home. _No thanks to me_ , he wanted to say. The brother who abandoned her. _Why would she want me back?_

For that matter, why would anyone?

Something had died inside him the night his wife and mother were killed. The night he lost the war for the north and failed his family. Something died and stayed dead even when the rest of him rose. He wasn’t the Young Wolf any longer. He was barely Robb Stark any longer. He was going home, but it hardly felt like it. It felt instead like he was headed for a second execution.

If only he had been allowed to die. It would have been much simpler. Perhaps his siblings could have loved his memory if he was too dead to hate. What would they think of him now that he was still alive?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Pale Blue Dot by Roger Goula


	3. Sansa I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa waits for Brienne, avoids Littlefinger, and worries about Jon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay! I somehow, through some black magic, managed to finish the first draft of this fic in a single month. It currently sits at 197k. It is SO much longer than I thought it would be. I deeply apologize for that and I hope that hasn't sent too many of you screaming for the exit. 
> 
> Now that the first draft is finished, I will be updating this more regularly! Probably not every day, but I'll try and stick to every 2/3 days.

“I don’t _care_ what they think about it,” Sansa said.

The cook was scowling at her, but Sansa pretended not to notice as she returned to scribbling in the ledger on the table. “They’ll have to be satisfied with a few extra lumps of meat in their broth as celebration. The Bolton army wiped out most of our stores, and until we can be sure of enough to last the winter, we can’t afford to waste what we _do_ have on extravagance. There will be no feast.”

The cook gave a rather poor curtsey and grumbled her way out of the hall. From the opposite door came a low laugh. Not as familiar as Sansa would have liked—her half-brother preferred to go around scowling when he wasn’t looking about anxiously for someone to advise him—but familiar enough to lighten her mood considerably. She turned to smile at him, and Jon entered the kitchen, hesitant, looking taller and broader than usual in the new fur cloak she’d made for him.

“She wasn’t very diplomatic,” he said in greeting. He had this quiet way of smiling that Sansa liked. Barely a smile at all, but it crinkled the corners of his eyes, and she knew it was real. She had seen it more often in the past few days, since the funerals for men who had fallen in the battle had all been finished. Jon had seemed less burdened since.

“I think I prefer the ones who _aren’t_ diplomatic,” she said. Lord Baelish’s smooth courtesies came to mind, but it wasn’t _just_ him. The servants that remained who had also served under Ramsay Bolton looked at her with pity and they spoke to her with kindness, and there were times when she appreciated it. Other times…

Anger wasn’t a rational emotion. Sometimes, hers left her breathless with its force. To the maids who offered her sympathetic smiles when she woke screaming in the night, she wanted to bare her scars and remind them how they could not look her in the eye for shame in the months in which they cleaned her bedding and brushed her hair and ignored her pleas for help. In those furious moments, it mattered not at all that they had also been prisoners. Worse off, too, not having the safety of a high birth to protect them from Ramsay’s cruel whims. At least when the cook or the stablemaster or the guards on the battlements were indifferent or even _rude_ to her, she knew that they hadn’t been in Winterfell when she was Ramsay’s prisoner, and she knew that they didn’t share that same strange pity.

“What were you saying about a feast?” Jon asked. He took another few steps into the room. He was always oddly tentative early in the morning. Perhaps he heard her when she screamed herself awake from those nightmares and was afraid to add to her discomfort. It seemed every day like he had to relearn their new camaraderie. Or at least to make sure that it still applied.

Perhaps it wasn’t about her fears at all; perhaps _he_ feared that he would wake one day and find her as dismissive and haughty as she used to be when they were children.

“She thinks we need a feast to raise our spirits,” Sansa said. She held him out a piece of warm bread from the loaf the cook left on the table. Jon took it with a grateful smile and looked considering as he chewed it. She read the look correctly. “Don’t you start. I’m in a mood to fight today.”

“I’ll tread carefully,” Jon replied. His growing good humor shone through in his eyes. “I was just thinking that you never would have turned down the opportunity for a feast before. You would have hounded your mother until she relented.”

Sansa smiled. She could almost hear her mother’s voice. It would have been sharp, and reaching the end of her patience.

“By the gods, Sansa,” she mimicked. “We can’t throw a feast every time you want to dance with some _boy_.”

Jon laughed, surprising her. Surprising himself, too, from the way he went quiet after.

“That was good,” he said, finally. “You sounded like her.”

_Not_ just _like her, I hope_. Sansa loved her mother. She missed her mother. She had yet to really reckon with the fact that in her eagerness to please her mother, she had avoided and denied and hurt the only brother she had remaining to her. She wasn’t that girl anymore, but she knew he still regarded her with a wariness that she had earned as a child and couldn’t do anything about now. It would take some time yet for it to heal.

“Lots of practice,” she said, brushing it away. “Arya and I used to mimic her when we were younger and she wasn’t letting us get our way. She _hated_ it. She would have been right, though; perhaps a feast _would_ be good for morale, but we don’t know how long supplies are going to last, and I refuse to copy the queen and gorge our bannermen while the smallfolk starve.”

“You’re nothing like Cersei,” Jon said. He had said so before, but she always liked to hear it.

“I don’t want to be,” she said. There was a familiar discomfort within her when she looked at Jon and thought of Cersei. She ignored it. “What did you need?”

“Just to update you. Tormund’s party chased down the last of the Bolton men. They chose to fight rather than submit.”

“Any survivors?”

“No.”

“Good,” Sansa said. She made herself smile, hoping to banish that worried furrow that every day dug deeper into Jon’s forehead. “Thank you for telling me.”

“Of course,” Jon said. He lay his gloved hand very briefly over her own to squeeze her fingers. A kind gesture. Comfort and assurance and perhaps _re_ assurance for himself that she was safe. Then he lumbered on his way to wherever his duties as king would take him next.

* * *

Sansa had begun to find peace in standing on the battlements and looking out at the snowy plains beyond her walls. They seemed to stretch forever, especially when the snowfall obscured the trees and the ridges in the distance. Everything in the world was endless white. Her home. It was a good way to remind herself that she was no longer a prisoner. The snow meant it wasn’t Kings Landing, and the plains were so flat that she knew immediately that it wasn’t The Vale. The white wolf flag flew over the walls in place of the atrocity that had flown for the Boltons. All of her demons could be banished in a single look.

It was also a good spot because Lord Baelish hated the wind and the fact that everyone could watch them when they stood up there. It was the safest place to be when she was too tired to deal with _him_ on top of everything else. She headed up after she was finished with inventory in the kitchen.

Jon was in the courtyard below, talking with Davos. He didn’t look up and see her, and that was just as well. He spent enough time worrying about her. She pulled her hood up against the wind.

_When I came back, I felt nothing. Just hurt. Anger. That’s all there was until you asked me to fight._

Barely a week ago, the night he was crowned king, when he came to her chambers and tried in his clumsy, awkward way to reassure her that he would protect her as best as he could. The lords may have chosen him to rule, but he would keep her counsel. He would make sure that she was listened to. He wouldn’t ever let her be married off to secure some alliance. He would keep her safe.

She appreciated his words, and she appreciated his nervousness, as much as that anger still burned in her, knowing she was not enough for the lords to choose her. But it was that desperate admission that stuck with her even days later. She could see it in him often, now that she knew. There was an uncertainty to him. A lack of balance. She knew she had been too careful with him since they talked, but she didn’t know how else to act. She couldn’t stop wondering: was he the same Jon she had known as a girl? Or was he something else? He didn’t seem sure himself. _I came back different_ , he had insisted, but he could not answer her when she asked _how_.

She barely knew him before, when they were children. That was her fault. She never _wanted_ to know him, because it wasn’t _right_ , and because she wanted her mother to think she was a good girl. Or that she was on her mother’s _side_ , maybe.

He had always been kind. She remembered _that._ Even though she had not spent much time with him, she had known enough to know that he was safe. Awkward around girls, stumbling over his words much more than Robb or Theon. _You should always tell a girl her name is pretty,_ she had offered once, after witnessing his failure to charm a traveler from Wintertown. He’d gone a bit red at that, but he had smiled, and he had thanked her. His voice had been so surprised. _Because you were never kind to him,_ she remembered.

So, he had been kind. Quiet. Awkward. That was all she had known of him before. She had never been interested in learning anything else.

And then he had died. And then he had come back to life. And he said himself that he was different from how he used to be.

He was Jon. She knew him. She _trusted_ him. She kept her every doubt buried down deep.

And it didn’t matter, anyway, if Jon _was_ different; Sansa was different too. For all that Jon tried to treat her as if she was the same little girl he had grown up so apart from, he wasn’t the only one who had moments of hollowness and hatred.

He was gentle with her, and she didn’t think him capable of hurting her. If anything, he was _too_ gentle. He forgot that she had seen and experienced terrible things, and he treated her like some delicate maiden that he had to protect. A _little sister_ , not an equal or a partner. Some days she didn’t mind that; some days she needed it. But some days she chafed under it. He was supposed to be _different_ from the rest of them. Nobody had ever believed her capable. Not her father. Not Arya. Not Cersei. Not Joffrey. _Nobody._

Nobody wanted to believe that she could stand on her own. Jon needed her to be the family he clung to when he was unconvinced of his own humanity. Littlefinger liked to believe that she wanted the same things he did, and he liked to believe that he was the only man clever enough to give them to her. Even to Brienne, Sansa was less a _person_ and more a way to keep an oath made to Sansa’s mother. A girl who needed protecting because Brienne made a promise to someone long dead and because she must have been the only person left in all of Westeros who thought promises actually meant something.

Sansa wasn’t _herself_ to anybody, and she didn’t know how to fix that. She wasn’t skilled in being herself any longer. Her only skill was in hiding. Pretty masks that kept every true feeling behind a veil.

She breathed in the bracing northern wind and looked out at the snow. Why had she ever wanted to leave this place? Why had she ever believed that she needed to go? There was power to be had here. Not the kind that Littlefinger wanted, but a kind of power that was older and deeper. She was strong here, in her home.

She searched the road south for any sign of Brienne. She had been waiting for word of her sworn sword ever since the first raven had arrived. Brienne wasn’t one for dissembling, so the secret she carried must have been important, for her to have even made the attempt.

_Lady Sansa,_ the letter had read. _I am returning to Winterfell with important persons thought lost. Riverrun has fallen to the Freys. There will be no army to assist you._

Brienne had surely heard on the road that the army would not be needed, but the letter was scrawled in haste, so she must not have known it then. Her mention of _important persons thought lost_ had haunted Sansa since. She knew better now than to get her hopes up, but she thought of Arya, and she wondered if it could be true. Maybe Arya had found her way to Riverrun and now was returning with Brienne and The Blackfish. They were the only two people of importance that Sansa could imagine Brienne finding there.

Lord Baelish would not find Arya so easy to control. Sansa hid her true feelings from him because she knew too much of him and too little of his power to risk standing openly against him. Arya had never had much use for those kinds of games. She would tell him exactly what she thought of him. She certainly wouldn’t _trust_ him. Maybe it would be enough to stop Lord Baelish from maneuvering against Jon the way he was plainly attempting to do. Maybe Arya would even annoy him enough to get him to go back to the Vale where he belonged.

Sansa took the scroll from within the deep pocket of her cloak and read the letter from Brienne again, smiling as her fingers brushed over the letters formed by Brienne’s neat hand, ever-correct even when she had clearly written quickly. When Arya was back, maybe things would start to feel like home again.

She looked down and saw that Jon had finally spotted her. He looked concerned again. She worried him with her silences and her habit of disappearing to herself for long stretches of time. She raised her hand in greeting and smiled to calm him, and he returned the gesture before turning his attention back to Davos.

The scroll went back into her pocket. She hadn’t yet mentioned it to him. She didn’t want to get his hopes up. And perhaps there was a bit of selfishness to it.

She only had a few days left to be the sister Jon loved. The sister Jon would do anything to protect. Things would be different when Arya came back. Arya had always been Jon’s favorite.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is The Winter by Balmorhea, which is also kind of Sansa's Theme for this fic. 
> 
> come scream at me about how fuckin' long this fic is over at angel-deux-writes on tumblr!


	4. Brienne I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’d had enough of dreams of Jaime. She didn’t want them anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone being kind about this story, and thank you to everyone reading it! I was really nervous about making this thing happen, and encouragement here and on tumblr has been wonderful!

“Jaime,” she begged, but Jaime only stared at her. Oathkeeper gleamed in his left hand. He had taken it from her.

He wore his rotting right hand around his neck, and his hair was lank and unwashed, and his eyes were red from weeping. “Jaime, please. Come with me.”

Jaime didn’t move. He _wanted_ to. She could see him struggle. His expression was beseeching. His eyes…

But he didn’t take a step towards her, and she continued to back away. Her own strides, even moving backward, were long, every one exaggerated, and soon she was too far for him to catch up even if he tried. He was fading. Her legs refused to stop. _Please. Don’t leave me._ Was that his voice, or her own?

She woke, then, and she pushed her crimson blanket away. It had grown colder the further north they traveled, and with the cold came the dreams. Unsettled, restless dreams of Jaime and his golden twin, or Jaime losing his hand, or Jaime falling from his horse, weak from infection. She’d had enough of dreams of Jaime. She didn’t want them anymore.

She stood and walked to the fire. The Blackfish, on watch, nodded in greeting when he saw her approach. He had been awake all night, yet he showed no signs of his fatigue, as upright and stoic as ever. He was an easy man to admire. Recognizing her intent to take the watch from him, he took himself to his own bedroll.

Podrick slept not far away, and she could make out the unruly tangle of Robb’s curls half buried beneath a blanket. She worried for him, the same way she had worried for Sansa at first, when Sansa was at her weakest and most frightened. Sansa had grown stronger the greater their distance from Winterfell and Ramsay Bolton, but with Robb it seemed the nearness to his family’s home gave him strength. Still, they had been riding hard, and he was often pale and fatigued.

Wolves howled in the distance, but they were a long ways off, and there were easier targets out there. She wasn’t worried about them. The wood from their campfire crackled, and Brienne threw more on. The heat that swelled and rolled over her face finally banished the last of that dream. It would cling to her when the morning came, she knew, but it would be easier to deal with in the light of day.

She pulled her hands from her gloves to warm them by the heat of the fire, and she laid her sword across her lap to look at it. She liked the way the colors in it rippled in the firelight. She had never seen a sword like Oathkeeper. It was special even beyond the fact that it would always be special to her. It was Ned Stark’s sword, melted down by his enemies and given away by one of them. An enemy turned reluctant friend. Now it was sworn to his house, to defend his daughter. It was the stuff of stories. Jaime had made her a knight from a tale with his gift. She wondered if he realized that.

Oathkeeper had glittered just like this when she had drawn it in the tunnel beneath Riverrun. The torches had caught the red in the rubies and in the blade just as easily as they had caught the look of incomprehension and betrayal that flickered across Jaime’s face.

_It’s yours_ , he had said, in his tent. _It will always be yours._

Would he have said those words if he knew how quickly she would draw her sword against him?

He had no right to be so surprised. He had no right to look at her as if _she_ was the one betraying an oath. She had made no promises to Ser Jaime. She had sworn no service to his family. He had to know what she would do when faced with a choice.

Why had he looked at her like that?

How _dare_ he look at her like that? Like _his_ heart was the one in danger of breaking.

She could only be grateful now, so many days removed from him, that he had not fully drawn his sword nor tried to fight past her. The oath she swore to Lady Catelyn was for her daughters, but Brienne would defend Robb all the same. It wouldn’t be a choice. It _couldn’t_ be a choice, if she wanted to uphold her honor.

Hers, and Ser Jaime’s as well. Whether he cared about his honor anymore or not.

_You love him_ , Cersei had said once, and she had been right. Brienne could acknowledge it on occasion, and sitting by a lonely campfire was the perfect time for it. Yes, she loved Jaime. Ser Jaime. The honorable man she knew he wanted to be. But she could not turn away and ignore the dishonorable things he continued to do for his sister.

It was one thing to do bad things when you had no other recourse, or when you believed you were doing good. But she had seen the defeat in Jaime’s eyes in that tent. She knew of the admiration he had for the Tullys, and she knew the disdain he had for the Freys, and yet he took Riverrun from the former and gifted it straight into the grasping claws of the latter. He could claim to hate it as much as he wished; he had still done it. In the name of his family, in the name of the beautiful sister he loved, he had done it.

And even as he knew he could not win against Brienne with his left hand, and even as he knew that she would be compelled to fight him, he still had considered it. Drawing his sword against her for the _Freys_ , of all people.

No, he deserved more credit than that. Or perhaps less, if she looked at it another way. Nothing had been done for the Freys. It was all for his sister, whatever he did. No matter what he wanted, no matter what his honor told him to do, it would always pale beside the ambitions of his family. She knew he had no real care for the political maneuverings of the great houses. On the road back to Kings Landing from Harrenhal, when she had grieved the loss of Lady Catelyn, he had spoken at length about how foolish they all were. “Even my father,” he had said one night, as they lay in their bedrolls, side by side, looking up at the stars. A pause. “Even Cersei. Killing each other for power and making enemies of houses who will one day rise high enough to take revenge. It’s endless. It’s madness. A cycle of men killing other men, and for what? An uncomfortable chair and a heavy crown.”

No, Jaime didn’t care about the Freys, and he didn’t care about the person that sat on the throne except as it related to whatever his sister wanted. He would give Cersei anything she wished. For her love, he would _do_ anything.

Brienne used to think of love as something that strengthened your resolve. When she fell in love with Renly, she followed him and fought for him. She learned to ignore the taunts and jeers of the men around her. Her spine grew straighter. Her purpose never wavered. Loving Jaime gave her the strength to endure whatever she had to so that she could get him his honor back and rescue the Stark girls.

But this? Jaime’s love for his sister had turned him weak. He wasn’t a true knight. He wasn’t protecting the innocent. He wasn’t defending those who couldn’t defend themselves. He was protecting _Cersei_ , who was _hurting_ the innocent and _killing_ the defenseless. And in protecting Cersei, he was protecting himself. For _love_. She’d never thought of love as selfish before, but it was, wasn’t it? Maybe she was just a fool who had only ever loved selflessly, without hope of reciprocation. Maybe someone less ugly, less mannish, would have turned it into something else. For her, love had always meant something different than what it seemed to mean to Jaime.

She supposed she was lucky she had sworn herself to a good house. The Starks never asked dishonor of her. They were fighting against monstrous men for their home and for their people. Lady Catelyn had only wanted her family to be safe, and Lady Sansa wanted the same, and they weren’t resorting to tricks and betrayals of honorable people to do it. If she _had_ sworn herself into Jaime’s service, what would she do now? What would she do when she saw him losing his way? Losing himself, the honorable man she had found beneath the Kingslayer when his sword hand was stripped from him and his mind fractured in the immediate aftermath? What would she do if she was now by his side, returning to Kings Landing triumphant, having stolen the lands of a great house to reward the shameful betrayal by a lesser one?

She liked to believe that she would have the strength to stand against him. She liked to believe that she would see his madness for his sister and would walk away. Find some other lord or lady to swear to. Stop him, perhaps, if she could. But it was impossible to say. Loving him afar was easy enough, because she could forget the parts of him that she wished were different. Loving him from up close might be harder, but it could be that it would be even easier, and the difficulty would be in leaving.

Jaime had made such a choice once. He had been strong enough, as little more than a boy, to do what grown men had been too afraid to. He had killed the Mad King, forsaking the vows he had sworn, which would have stopped him from saving the city. Brienne loved him for that. She loved him for following her into the bear pit when he had to know he had no chance. When he was strong and chose to fight for the innocent. When he could turn aside from his family and do what was right. She loved him then. She supposed she must love the rest of him, the darkness and the weakness and the choices she could not swallow, but she could not respect those parts of him, and she could not defend the choices that those parts of him made. Not when he was not strong enough to want to defend himself.

_Defeat_. That was what the look had been when he saw her draw her sword. Defeat. Not apology. He knew that his choices had led them to that awful place, and perhaps he _did_ regret. But it was acceptance more than it was remorse. He understood that he had earned her scorn, and he did nothing to change it or reassure her or beg her to see his side of things.

Could he still be honorable? Could an honorable man do dishonorable things, even if he knew them to be dishonorable, and survive with his honor intact? She didn’t know. It was a question too big for her. It was a question she was still too close to, for love of him.

_It has never been rational,_ she told herself. _Feeling anything for him. You always knew that it would come to nothing, and that is exactly what has happened. You’re lucky he didn’t draw his sword and make you strike him down. Knowing that doesn’t mean that you can’t love him anyway. You can love him and also mourn the man he could have been._

Robb stirred eventually, and he joined her by the fire. His cheek was red from where he had been resting it on the pack he was using as a pillow. He looked younger. Almost like a child. She couldn’t help but think of Lady Catelyn. Her fierce mother’s heart. The strength she had that was so unlike any kind of strength that Brienne had ever known. Robb was not so much younger than Brienne, but she felt the same motherly impulses for him that she felt for Sansa and for Podrick both. That she had felt for Arya when she saw her, however fleetingly. She wanted to keep him safe the way that Lady Catelyn had wanted to keep him safe. What could her own heart’s foolish desires mean when stacked against that kind of love?

Jaime would never love her. _We don’t get to choose who we love,_ he had said. Many of the things he had said to her on the road to Kings Landing were cruel or unfair, but those words had been neither. She had not chosen to love Renly, and she had not chosen to love Jaime, just as Jaime hadn’t chosen to love his sister. Love had crept up within them. It wasn’t a choice.

But she _could_ choose what to do with that love. She could choose what form that love took. She could choose to honor Jaime’s oaths to Lady Catelyn even if Jaime would not. To tend to his honor when he failed to do it for himself. When people asked her where she got her sword, she would say with pride that Ser Jaime Lannister had given it to her for the express purpose of protecting the daughters of Catelyn Stark, and people would know that no matter what else Jaime was, he _was_ capable of doing the honorable thing. That was a form of love. It wasn’t love like she had dreamed of as a girl, but it was all the love she had been given, and it was _something_. She could love him and wish he was more deserving of it at the same time.

“Not too many days left,” Robb said. His voice was hoarse. Brienne put her sword away, and she packed her thoughts of Jaime away with it.

“No,” she said. “We aren’t far from Winterfell at all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Here with Me by Susie Suh & Robot Koch


	5. Robb II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robb tries to better understand Brienne.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one's pretty short, but that's fitting because I don't have much time today! The next chapter will probably be added tomorrow.

Robb tried to convince himself in the final days on the road that he was eager to reach Winterfell, but it wasn’t working.

He could fool his uncle, and he thought he could fool Brienne and Podrick as well, but he couldn’t fool himself into thinking that he felt anything but terror at the thought of seeing home again.

Not _anything_ but terror. That wasn’t fair. He longed for it. For the familiar walls and for the familiar faces that should greet him there. But it wouldn’t _be_ familiar, and that was the problem. It would be changed, diminished. Newly host to a battle that must have wrought destruction, and so many horrible things had befallen it since last he was there. Every change would be a mark of his failure. Every missing face. Every bitter look in every downturned eye. How could they not hate him? How could he just return home and pretend like his choices had not led to their suffering?

The longer their party lingered in inn common rooms over sparse vegetable broths, the more they heard about the battle. Weary survivors were heading south to spread the word, or they were fleeing the wildlings who had been allowed past the wall under Jon’s direction. Those who were leaving had little good to say about the Starks and their armies, and Robb hated to listen to them, but he knew that the truth was likely somewhere in their bitter words. People spoke often about Jon, and about how he fought like a beast more than like a man, and how he beat the Bastard of Bolton to death, or perhaps flayed him alive, or perhaps fed him to his direwolf, all as revenge for the way Bolton treated his sister. They talked about Sansa, the pale northern beauty with her cold eyes and colder heart, her sweetness turned to stone after all she had suffered. Riding into battle with an army from the Vale, rescuing the survivors of Jon’s wildling force. As they got closer, the people in the inn common rooms became loyal northerners, and they spoke and sang and laughed about how the Starks had reclaimed their family home in their dead brother’s name, and how they avenged the deaths at the Red Wedding, and how they faced impossible odds and yet refused to run.

They had done it. They had faced those impossible things, and they had triumphed. But how could they possibly face _him_?

They had only been made to fight because _he_ had failed to do it. They suffered what they suffered because _he_ had failed to help them. Jon had done the impossible, and Sansa brought an army to support him, and now Robb would return, this failed king who had lost their war the first time because he was selfish enough to choose love above all else.

Perhaps Brienne was right when she said that the northern lords would want him back on the throne, but Robb thought it was more likely that they would sneer and order him banished to the Wall for his part in the destruction of their houses and the deaths of their sons. All those people who rode to war for him who died when he put his heart before his honor.

No, he could not look forward to seeing his home again.

* * *

They were waiting, he and Brienne, as Podrick and Brynden scouted ahead to make certain that the road was clear. Brienne’s hand was on her sword, gripping the lion’s head pommel that Robb found himself examining again. He looked up from it and saw that Brienne was watching him instead of the road.

“It was your father’s sword,” she said.

She spoke with a great effort of steadiness that couldn’t hide the way her hand tightened. Robb looked back down at the sword. There was nothing left of Ice. If she hadn’t told him…

“My father’s sword was twice its size, if not more,” he said. He wasn’t sure why he argued. She wouldn’t tell him that if it wasn’t true, especially since she looked so frightened that he might snatch the thing away from her. She would give it to him, he thought. It would break her heart, but she would do it, if he demanded it.

“Tywin Lannister had it melted down,” she said.

“Of course he did,” Robb replied, because Tywin Lannister _would_. It wouldn’t be enough to kill Ned Stark and destroy his house. Tywin probably relished in melting down the Stark legacy. Everyone knew the tales about him. How he dealt with slights made against him, both real and imagined.

“Ser Jaime told me that his father spent half his life trying to buy a Valyrian steel sword off of one of the other houses. He was refused at every turn. No one would give one up to him. So he melted your father’s sword down, and he made two blades. One, he gave to Joffrey. I don’t know what became of it. The other, he gave to Ser Jaime. And Ser Jaime gave it to me. He told me to defend Ned Stark’s daughters with Ned Stark’s sword.” She looked at him as if she wanted him to understand something. Her eyes were very nearly pleading with him.

“I was thinking of divided loyalties,” he said. Her expression remained steady, but he knew he wasn’t imagining the tension. “At Riverrun, you were tested.”

She waited. She looked at him like she expected him to say something more, but he didn’t.

“Perhaps,” she admitted, and her tone made it sound like _yes._

“Whatever happened to you when my mother set you loose, it must have been…” He found he didn’t quite know how to continue that sentence, but Brienne nodded.

“It was,” she said. He wanted to ask. He supposed he wanted to understand. Perhaps the root of it was that he wanted to know how a man like the Kingslayer could be anything to a woman as honorable as he believed Brienne to be. Not because he thought it so horrid, though from her expression that was exactly what she feared. Really, it was selfish. How had she looked past all of the Kingslayer’s sins? How had she formed anything but animosity for him? His sins were maybe not nearly so bad as the Kingslayer’s, but they were bad enough, and he wanted to understand.

“You care for him,” he said. “Despite everything.”

“Yes,” Brienne answered. “I won’t deny that he has done monstrous things. But…he made his choices for love, and though they may have been the wrong ones, they weren’t made with an evil heart.” She must have found that he looked still unconvinced, because she looked away. Her jaw tightened. She continued, slightly more firm, slightly wary, with, “I don’t expect anyone in your family to understand the regard I have for Ser Jaime. But I assure you that my loyalties aren’t divided. I swore an oath to your mother, and I swore an oath to your sister.”

“I think you mistake me,” Robb said with a small smile. “If I wonder at your choices, it’s only because I made the wrong ones, myself.”

Brienne’s look in his direction was sudden, sharp. He wondered if Sansa knew how to read her expressions any easier than he did. Or did the Kingslayer perhaps have that skill? Jaime Lannister’s pain had been simple to read when Brienne faced him in the tunnel beneath Riverrun. Had The Kingslayer read her intentions? Had he been able to see the small shifts, the trembles at the corners of her mouth and the way her eyes always darted when she was uncertain? To Robb, she was almost a mystery still.

“You made a mistake,” she said finally. He didn’t need to understand her to know that she was just being kind. He laughed quietly, and she looked away again.

“I lost a war,” he said. “Because I followed my heart instead of my mind. And you…”

She didn’t meet his eyes. Her hand was still wrapped around the sword.

“I did my duty,” she said.

“And you would have done more,” he replied.

“He is your enemy. I would think you would have no problem with my choices.”

“I don’t. I admire your ability to make them.”

That seemed to displease her more than anything else. She squeezed her eyes shut. He could see her absorbing the blow as if it pained her.

“Your _mistake_ was not in loving her,” she managed. “Nor was it your choice. Your mistake was in choosing to break the alliance for the sake of that love. And it wouldn’t be the same. I don’t…I _admire_ Ser Jaime. I know he is more than what the world has painted him as. But I admired your mother as well. I admire your sister. It isn’t the same as the choice you made. It isn’t _even_ a choice. Lannister or Stark. There isn’t a choice for me. Even if I had sworn myself to Ser Jaime instead of your mother, I wouldn’t be able to support the queen. Her cruelty and her quest for power. I could not serve her. It isn’t about vows and honor. And it isn’t about love. It’s about doing what’s right despite whatever you _feel_ about it.”

“I didn’t do that, either,” he pointed out, because she was talking around the thing he realized he selfishly wanted her to say. His uncle had been too careful with him since the wedding, and Robb hated it. Treating him as if he was fragile, as if he had a bad thing done to him. As if Robb couldn’t see the disgust and frustration behind Brynden’s eyes every time he looked at him and saw his beloved dead niece, killed because Robb was too great a fool to trust his mother’s judgement.

“No,” Brienne admitted, finally. Just as he had wanted. She seemed annoyed to have been forced to say it, but this time when she met his eyes, she didn’t look away. “You didn’t. And you can’t change that. You just have to choose correctly next time.”

She was defiant, and she stared at him, daring him to argue with her, or to ask another question. _No_ , he thought, satisfied. _She doesn’t like me at all._ He found himself liking her all the more for it, for the prickliness that she couldn’t hide and for the blame that she plainly wished she could. She couldn’t help but be honest. He supposed he could understand how a man like the Kingslayer would find himself attached to a woman like Brienne. After being among his family of snakes and schemers, Brienne must have been refreshing. She was so unlike the Lannisters. She was unlike anyone Robb had ever met. He understood now why his mother had trusted her with the things she had.

Brynden whistled from ahead, and Brienne led her horse back into the road with another reproachful look for Robb. He followed without complaint, and without further conversation. He wondered what it must be like, to be the kind of woman who believed so strongly in doing the right thing that she was willing to draw her sword against a man she plainly loved. To sacrifice something so vital because she believed in the importance of a vow sworn for the right reasons. What must it have been like to have that conviction?

Lonely, perhaps. But better to be lonely than to make the kinds of mistakes Robb had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Broken Crown by Mumford and Sons


	6. Jaime II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime hears of what Cersei has done in Kings Landing, and he rides home to confront her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for continuing to indulge this nonsense! I figured since the last one was so short, I'd get this one up today! It'll probably be a few days before an update.

It was maddening, in hindsight, that he and Brienne had left things the way they had. It ate away at him as he rode. Sending her the horses and provisions and his own bloody blankets had been a _gesture_ , perhaps an apology of a sort, but he still wasn’t sure how it would be received. Would it be enough? Would she understand?

Even just seeing her had been more of a jolt to his system than he had expected.

There was so much about her that was exactly the same as it used to be. She was different, in an odd way that he found he liked; more sure of herself, less eager to hide herself away. She had grown into her armor in a way that made her look more comfortable with her height and the breadth of her shoulders and her unladylike mannerisms. He _liked_ seeing her. She looked well enough to set his mind at ease; he had worried for her, when she was gone so long without any word.

It was painful all the same. He found her to be a bitter reminder of the worst of his failings. He had been so sure that he could _change._ After she had returned him to Kings Landing, after she left and promised to find some of his lost honor, he thought…well. He hardly knew what he thought. But whatever it was, it certainly hadn’t happened. He had failed at that, too. Whatever conviction he had had, it had bled away.

He had lost sight of it. He wasn’t sure when. Sometime after his father’s death and Tyrion’s escape and Cersei’s threats and the wearing down of that restless sense of purpose that his journey with Brienne had given him. A flare of feeling, of wanting to be better and more than he had resigned himself to being. But a few softnesses from his sister. A few promises of fidelity and forever and reminders that they were meant to be together, and wasn’t it _easier_ to be the man his sister wanted him to be? More difficult than it used to be, like trying to wear the wrong man’s armor, but he still knew how to be that man better than he knew how to be any other.

He was the brother Cersei wanted, and she was the sister he loved, and he could close his eyes to anything, because _she_ was what mattered. Seeing Brienne shouldn’t have changed that, and yet it _had_.

Brienne had believed in that better man, too. It was clear from the way she spoke to him that she _still_ did. Despite everything.

How could she?

Every night on the road back home, as he lay in his tent or beneath the stars or in whatever bed an inn could spare, he remembered the way she had looked at him when she drew her sword in that tunnel beneath Riverrun. Her eyes had been too sincere. They exposed everything for him to see and understand and hate himself for forcing her into that position. If there had been more time, if they had been alone…

He would have wanted to explain to her. Not that the explanation would have made it any better. Actually, it might have made things worse. Brienne would have looked at him in silent judgement as he tried to find a way to justify why he was still supporting Cersei when they both knew that his sister’s goals were not what he would have chosen. What could he have said that would have made Brienne understand? _Nothing_. Even if Brienne hadn’t sworn to protect the Starks, she never would have seen him as anything but monstrous for trying to stand in her way.

_She would have killed me_ , he thought almost every night. _And she would have been right to do it._

Maybe it would have been worse if they were alone in that tunnel, but she had seemed to understand him when they were in his tent. He had been too great a fool to speak plainly to her, and he knew she wouldn’t know what to make of it if he _had_ , but she had met his gaze and spoke to him with that new, unfamiliar confidence, only slightly dimmed by her obvious fear to stand against him, and an understanding had passed between them.

_If things were different. If this war was over_.

Well, but it was hardly fair of him to despair of a war when his impulsive cruelties were what had caused it. And it wouldn’t matter, anyway. There would still be Cersei when the wars were done.

Cersei. He tried to tell himself he was breathing easier the closer they got to Kings Landing. Things would be different now. Cersei had promised him.

* * *

They were three days out from Kings Landing when they heard the news.

The Sept of Baelor was a crater. Queen Margaery and her brother Loras and their father had all been killed, along with the majority of the nobility in Kings Landing. Tommen...

_Tommen._

“Are you sure?” he asked Bronn, who had been the only man brave enough to deliver the news. The rest who had been riding with them had judiciously disappeared from the inn’s common room by the time Jaime entered to find Bronn waiting. Perhaps they expected him to reveal too much of himself. Perhaps they avoided the common room so they could continue to pretend they didn’t believe the rumors that Stannis Baratheon had spread. A normal father would probably show some emotion, wouldn’t he? To hear that his only surviving child had died? Jaime still didn’t dare. He tucked himself away, instead.

“The lad who passed on the news wasn’t lying,” Bronn said. Not even the most generous man would call Bronn’s expression sympathetic, but it was sympathetic for _him_. It only made Jaime feel worse. He left, though he hardly knew where he planned to go.

He found himself outside, in a small copse of trees just beyond the inn. His men were camped out in the yard and beyond, but none of them were near enough to hear his heavy breathing and the panic that this revelation had brought. _I should be crying_ , he thought. A normal father would cry. He couldn’t. He had cried with Myrcella in his arms, but Tommen…was it possible? It didn’t _seem_ possible.

_Cersei wouldn’t_ , said an old impulse in his mind. _She would never. She loves her children. She loves her son. She loves me._

But did she love any of them more than she loved her freedom? Her power? Would that love be enough to make up for the fact that the High Sparrow and the Tyrells had her backed into a corner, frightened and humiliated and furious?

Could she be so hard-hearted in her thirst for revenge that she would risk their son’s life?

No. She must not have intended it. He could not believe that she had intended it.

* * *

He and Bronn rode through the night, and then the following day. They traded horses at an inn, and Bronn didn’t bitch even once about needing to rest. Perhaps he had been about to, when they heard from the innkeeper exactly _how_ the king had died. He didn’t say anything, then. Only followed Jaime until they reached Kings Landing.

Smoke still hung over the city, and Jaime wondered if his sister had smiled the way Aerys used to when she saw the green of the wildfire igniting and taking out all of her enemies at once. Never mind that her actions would make them a million more. Never mind that their son leapt from his window in horror at what had happened. Did Cersei smile at that green-lit moment? Had she thought herself the victor?

* * *

She wasn’t smiling on the throne. He entered as she was crowned. It was a somber, dark affair. She saw him somehow in the back of the room, and she met his eyes with a cold defiance.

She seemed unsurprised to find him waiting for her when she entered her room afterward. He was ready to fight her if she tried to protest his presence for propriety’s sake. She didn’t say anything. She poured herself a glass of wine. She was still wearing her crown.

“You took long enough,” she finally said. Her voice was too airy. Unconcerned. A brave face, and a blank one. He could not tell what she was feeling. It frightened him. She looked him over with distaste. Dirt still clung to him from the road. “I hear the Blackfish escaped.”

“Uncle Kevan was in the Sept,” Jaime said. Cersei raised her eyes to meet his. Her jaw ticked with tension. She was afraid of him too, he realized. She had believed that she would either find him compliant or murderous, and _murderous_ was what she saw now. He had instantly made himself into another obstacle for her. _She loves you?_ his inner voice wondered. _Are you sure?_

“I warned him not to stand in my way,” she said. Jaime’s stump ached, and his head pounded, and he had ridden for days without sleep to be here, to see it for himself, and he found her as beautiful and as immovable as marble.

“The Tyrells will stand against us now,” he said.

“An old woman and an army of green boys. Do you think father would quail in fear at the thought of them?”

“Father knew that not every war is won on the battlefield. Olenna Tyrell…”

“Will stay in her rose garden if she knows what’s good for her. I have already taken her heirs. I can take so much more. The vengeful bitch should have known not to underestimate another queen, and yet here we are.” Cersei drank, but he saw the way her hands trembled. She was still afraid. She didn’t turn her back to him, as she so often did while talking to him. Dismissing his worst concerns with a physical turning away, because she knew it hurt him.

No, she didn’t trust him enough to turn her back on him now. _Him_. After all he had done for her, she thought…

_She thinks you’re strong enough to make the right choice._ _She has no idea that you’re too weak._

“Our _son_ is dead,” Jaime said.

Cersei’s mask slipped. Not very much. It never did when she was convinced that she had to hide. But he saw the cracks in it, and he saw the way she had to make an effort to smooth it over and make it blank again. She took another sip of wine.

“Tommen made too many mistakes, and he found he could not live with them,” she said. Jaime stood and went to her, needing to see her face more closely. Needing to understand something.

“Tommen was a _child_ , and the mistakes were yours,” he said. Cersei didn’t flinch or back away, just tilted her chin up higher, her eyes flashing at him. Green and furious. “ _Wildfire_ , Cersei?”

She didn’t know, of course, of how he woke sometimes in the night in a cold sweat, the Mad King’s laughter echoing, following him from his dreams. She didn’t know because he had never told her. Never told anyone but Brienne, because he had, in his illness and weakness and wretchedness, _needed_ Brienne to understand. Cersei…perhaps he never gave her enough credit. Perhaps she _would_ have understood, but Jaime still doubted it. She had never asked, because she had never wanted to know. She had been happy he killed the king and made way for her to be Robert’s queen. To her, _that_ was the right thing to do. Securing the throne for the Lannisters. She would not have cared to hear about the reasons that truly drove him.

If he told her about Aerys and wildfire now, she would see it as a threat, because it would be meant as one. A reminder that he had killed a king before. He could never kill Cersei, but there were other ways to remove a queen from power, and he would do it if she proved as mad as Aerys had been.

“Thank Tyrion,” she said. “He was the one who gave me the idea. The little imp was good for something after all. You should have seen the way it glowed.” She smiled, knowing from his shifting expression that he was disgusted, and perhaps afraid. “Well?” The wine had made her reckless, or perhaps it was something else. The headiness of growing power. The slow realization that he _wasn’t_ going to stop her. “You stand there disapproving like an old septa, but what are you going to _do_ about it?” She waited. Her confidence was growing. She wasn’t afraid anymore. She tilted her head further back, exposing her throat. A parody of an animal gesture of trust. She didn’t _trust_ him. She knew exactly what he was thinking of her. She also knew that he wouldn’t harm her. That wasn’t trust. That was an awareness of his weaknesses. “Go on. Tell me again how our son’s death is my fault. Tell me that I’m not fit to rule. Take the crown from my head and sit on my throne the way you have always longed to do.”

“You’re a fool, Cersei,” he told her. His voice croaked.

“A queen,” she reminded him. “Even father never managed to be king.”

She turned away from him at last, and she finished the wine in her goblet. Her hands didn’t shake anymore. She knew now that she had won. Jaime was the one left shaken. His knees felt unsteady. His only hand was weak. He still had it curled into a fist at his side. He watched her walk away and there was despair in his chest. He wanted to call out to her. Condemn her. Beg her to listen to reason.

She turned over her shoulder to look at him, and her smile grew when she saw him standing exactly where she had left him. Yes, she knew she had won. She knew that he couldn’t harm her, and she knew that he wasn’t strong enough to leave her. Where would he even go? Find Tyrion somewhere across the Narrow Sea and join him wallowing in whatever whorehouse he had chosen for drowning his sorrows? Head North to Winterfell to see Brienne again before losing his head to a Stark sword? No. Cersei was his sister. His twin. He loved her still, even if he no longer understood _why_.

He had felt this with Aerys, too. This suffocation. This lack of other options. With Aerys, he found salvation with a sword through the Mad King’s back, but he wouldn’t find that here. Not with Cersei. If he killed _her_ , it would be his ruin.

Still, the old methods would work the way they always had. He could not see a way to stop this, not yet, but he could find a way to live with it. Go away inside. Think of better things. A swordfight with a warrior maiden on a bridge by a stream.

“The Starks have taken back the north,” Cersei was saying. “But they have lost most of their army. Qyburn’s little birds are already looking for numbers. They shouldn’t bother us, at any rate. For all your bleating about enemies, we are secure for the time being.”

She was talking still, but Jaime wasn’t there. He had two hands, and Brienne was snarling at him behind her sword. What a fight that had been! His last fight when he was whole.

He looked out at Cersei’s balcony and saw the still-smoldering wreckage of the Sept. Yes, that was where she had stood and watched it. That was where she had sipped her wine and smiled. He could see it so easily. He almost understood Tommen’s choice.

Had Brienne made it back north in time for that battle Cersei had mentioned? He hoped that she hadn’t.

_Please, at least let her be alive. I have nothing else to ask for._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Curse by This Pale Fire


	7. Jon I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon finds Sansa standing at the window of her solar, looking out at four figures riding towards Winterfell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another kind of short one (I'll stop apologizing for that eventually; most of the chapters are short!) and it's kind of a lead-in to a bigger chapter, so I may update tomorrow as well!

It wasn’t that Jon was _never_ in a good mood. It was just that good moods made him suspicious. They seldom lasted very long, so what else was he to do but prepare for them to end? Sansa always teased him for it and called him grim and solemn, but he couldn’t help it. Besides, shouldn’t a king _be_ those things? He only ever met one king who was at all disposed to smiling and mirth, and Robert Baratheon wasn’t a very good example of what a king should be. Kingliness seemed like it should be hand-in-hand with sobriety. Or at least _some_ form of sobriety.

On that particular morning, Jon fortuitously found himself wondering what Robb had been like when _he_ was king. Robb had always been the least serious of the Stark boys. Arya was perhaps less serious, but only _just_. Robb had always gotten along well with Theon, wanting to be like him, always laughing and irreverent. Jon forever felt awkward and too serious beside them. Robb could make him laugh, and could break him out of that seriousness sometimes, but Jon could never keep it up. Robb was brighter. Faster. Funnier. Stronger.

Robb was the heir, and Jon the bastard.

Robb had been everything that Jon wasn’t, and even now Jon felt his brother’s ghost in the halls of Winterfell. Was he comporting himself the same way Robb had when he was king? Or had Robb laughed with his men and made them love him by virtue of being the same mischievous, clever boy he always had been? When Jon was at the Wall, hearing of Robb’s victories only weeks after they happened, they always _felt_ like Robb. Outwitting more experienced men by doing things that only a green boy would believe could succeed. As months went by in the Watch, Jon found himself wishing he could speak to Robb. Just for an hour or two. Just long enough so that he could get his brother’s advice. As he rose in the ranks and proved himself despite all the older men who thought they knew better, he wanted to know how his brother had managed to keep _his_ people happy and loyal _._

Now he found himself wondering what his brother would say about _this_. Jon Snow, the Bastard of Winterfell. King of the North. When they were younger, and they played at swords and heroes, Robb was never slow to remind Jon that he would never be the Lord of Winterfell. Not in a way that felt cruel, but in a way that was simply stated, without artifice. It was just a fact. It was just the way things were. Robb would be the Lord, and Jon would be something else.

Jon had tried before to talk about it with Sansa, but Sansa hadn’t understood. She had rushed to reassure him. She told him that he was good at ruling. She told him that she trusted him. She affirmed that they were family. They were all things that Jon liked to hear, but they also weren’t exactly what he had needed.

Sansa never wanted to talk about things critically, and it made him think of Sam sometimes. Sam was always about reassurances, too, because reassurances were what _Sam_ wanted when he was upset about something or doubtful about something. Jon didn’t need that. He needed the criticism and he needed someone to point out the mistakes he might be making. Sansa did that sometimes, but always so _delicately,_ lately. He wished she wouldn’t be so careful with him.

There was so much more that he could be doing. He was trying his best to rebuild their home and reassure the lords that he would be a good king, but it wasn’t _enough_. Not enough for Sansa, certainly, but more than that: not enough for his people. Why had they chosen him? Why had Lyanna Mormont raised her voice for _him_? And why had he taken the crown at all when the crown was the last thing he wanted? He didn’t want to be Robb. He didn’t want to be Lord of Winterfell. He never had.

Not aloud, anyway. Not where anyone could see it. And certainly not like this.

And besides. He was a man who had died and came back to life again. He still wasn’t sure what that meant. He still wasn’t sure if he had come back _right._ His body had healed, leaving only scars behind, but he could still feel it sometimes, those knives and the betrayal that came hand-in-hand with the pain when they entered him. He could still feel the crushing blankness of _after_.

He put it aside. Pushed it away. That was all he knew how to do with it. He would start to despair if he thought about it too long.

Davos found him in the hall and updated him on the status of the men Jon sent to the Dreadfort. It had been retaken for the north, and now he only needed to choose which loyal vassal of House Stark would receive the Bolton stronghold as a prize.

“I’ll need to discuss it with Sansa,” he said, as he always did, and Davos nodded. Jon had been relieved to find that Davos valued Sansa’s advice almost as much as he himself did. Davos was a stranger to the north, still, and though he had given good counsel, and though he understood the way men thought in a way only a smuggler with experience could, the more subtle politics like choosing which house to show favor to were still lost on him.

If Jon could stomach asking Lord Baelish for anything, it was possible that Littlefinger would also be a good person to ask, but Jon found it best practice to avoid being in Baelish’s presence as much as possible. Both because of Sansa’s warnings and because he simply couldn’t stand the man.

He left Davos and headed for Sansa’s chambers. She was usually in their father’s old solar during the day, working on whatever dress or cloak or stitching she had been doing, taking time to write letters or receive letters that she might choose to share with him later. Most of the time, Sansa was a mystery. Davos had asked him more than once if Jon didn’t fear his sister’s closeness with Littlefinger, and Jon had answered immediately in the negative, but that had been a lie.

Of course Jon feared it. Jon feared that he was just a fool, being swindled for love of his sister. She’d been with Littlefinger in the Vale, and he was one of the most renowned schemers in the world. Would it be so surprising for Littlefinger to use Sansa to take Winterfell back by appealing to Jon’s brotherly nature? Taking him down from where she sat beside him? Looking at it from the outside, it certainly made more sense than Sansa suddenly finding room in her heart for the bastard brother she had never cared for. But he _trusted_ her, and he would continue to trust her. Sansa had always been nearly as much an outsider to the Stark siblings as Jon—her by choice, he by circumstance—but they needed each other now, and Jon refused to believe that she was any less happy than he was about being back together.

The alternative to trusting Sansa would be planning for the worst and plotting against her, and Jon didn’t think he had the heart for that. Whatever would happen would happen, and he trusted Sansa to handle Littlefinger, and he trusted her when she said that he could not.

They _had_ to trust each other. They were all that was left.

* * *

When he knocked on the solar door, Sansa called out that he could enter, recognizing the knock as his own. Once he was within, it took him a moment to find her. She wasn’t sitting by the fire in her usual spot, and she wasn’t standing by the desk the way she sometimes did when she was distracted by some correspondence. She was standing instead by the window, and he could see that she was tense. Her knuckles were white as she grasped the edge of the stone wall beside her.

“Sansa?” he asked, and she released it to hold her hand back to him without turning.

“Jon,” she said. “Come here. Tell me what you see.”

He went to her, and he took her grasping hand with his own, pulling it down by his side so that he could squeeze beside her in the narrow nook that held the window. It didn’t take him very long to see where she had been looking. The field outside Winterfell was white with snow, the blood from the battle finally all gone and buried beneath the recent storms, and the contrast made it impossible to miss the four shapes riding toward Winterfell.

The tallest form was easy. Brienne of Tarth cut an impressive figure, and she rode her horse the way she did anything: with a regal sort of competence that made him think of the warrior queens from the stories that Old Nan used to tell. The older man who rode beside her was unfamiliar, but Jon knew it must be The Blackfish; he couldn’t say he was eager to make the acquaintance of Lady Catelyn’s uncle.

Behind them both rode Podrick, looking little steadier on his horse than he had been when he left, poor lad. And beside _him_ …

The fourth rider was bundled in a fur cloak against the cold. Jon could see that it was the one that Sansa made for Brienne, and it was large enough to obscure most of the man’s features, but not the hair, and not the shape.

It had been so long. Long enough to forget some things. Long enough to make him doubt.

_Long enough, yes, and it’s also impossible_ , he reminded himself. _Robb is dead._

Still.

“Robb,” he breathed, and Sansa’s fingers tightened on his own. He took his eyes off the man who could not be Robb, and he turned to look at her. Sansa’s gaze was already on his face. Hopeful, eyes lighting, only slightly tempered by the pragmatism that she had been forced to learn. Jon felt his heart clench for a thousand different reasons. Robb could be alive. Robb could be alive, and that was enough to make him smile for a full year. But to see Sansa show hope again. To see her not immediately dismiss a good thing as impossible, it felt…

“Can it be him?” she asked. Begging him for confirmation.

“It looks like him,” he admitted. “It looks like him. I don’t know. I can’t…”

They both laughed at once, giddy and overwhelmed, and the light in Sansa’s eyes grew even brighter, eclipsing the worry and the doubt she still wore in that little line between her brows.

“He’s alive,” she said. Her hands went to his shoulders, grasping him there. Her awe overtook her, and she shook her head. “It can’t be him. Some Tully cousin, but…no. He’s alive. It’s _him_.” Her hands released him, and she sent him an embarrassed smile that he had to smile back at. Her fingers went to her hair, feeling the messy braid she was only now noticing. “Oh, gods. We need to be ready to receive him. Oh, Jon. He’s _alive_.”

She took out her braid, and she darted to the other side of the room, slipping into her bedroom, already talking to herself about all the things they needed to do to be ready. The riders would be at the gate in mere minutes, but if there was anyone who could finish ten tasks in a timeframe better suited to three, it was Sansa. Jon waited for her in the hall outside, pacing.

The shock wore off slowly. The doubt was dashed away. And he found himself, for a moment, horribly, disgustingly torn.

He would never admit it aloud. Not for anything. But for a single moment, Robb’s return was not the sweetness that it was for Sansa.

Anyone would guess it was for the crown. Ygritte, if she lived, she would laugh at him for it. She would tell him that he was just like any other man, after all. Claiming that he didn’t want the seat and then finding that he did when it came time to give it up. But it wasn’t that. Jon didn’t care for the crown. Robb’s return was a relief, because surely the lords would want it to go back on the head of a trueborn Stark.

No. It was worse than that, maybe. Because for that instant, Jon was _jealous_.

Sansa adored Robb. She had her earned bitterness, Jon knew, over the fact that Robb left her in Kings Landing and didn’t try to trade Jaime Lannister for her. He had disinherited her when she was forced to marry Tyrion. He had chosen his war over his sister’s safety, and she would not so easily forgive that. But she spoke about that time now with a resigned, pragmatic edge, and she claimed to believe that those choices had been the right ones for Robb to make, even if they hurt her

Jon disagreed, but Sansa had become more practical, and he knew that she found comfort in her decision that Robb had chosen to do the right thing, even if he later chose wrong. And whatever part of Sansa’s heart still remained untouched by what had happened to her probably thought it was _romantic_ for Robb to choose love instead of duty. Or perhaps it was just that Robb was dead, and he became something mythical in Sansa’s mind. Her older brother who used to carry her on his shoulders and pretend to be her knight every time she wanted to play. She dreamed in Kings Landing of Robb coming to save her. She had mentioned it to Jon before. She didn’t have to say that she never dreamed of _him_ , the bastard half-brother, away at The Wall. He understood, because the sister he missed was always Arya.

It was horrible, and he loathed himself for it, but for a few moments, he felt this awful, sinking envy. With Robb back, with her favorite brother back…He had enjoyed the past few months of closeness with Sansa, even when they were fighting for their home and constantly arguing about how to do it. It felt good to argue with someone but never question their love. To be able to sit with her long into the night as she sewed or wrote or simply stared into the fire and refused to sleep, the nightmares of Ramsay’s torture following her unless he or Brienne were close by. And even once Ramsay was dead and they were back behind the walls of Winterfell, safe and uncontested, he had enjoyed continuing that. Sitting with her in the solar. Consulting with her when they had to figure out how to deal with the northern lords. He could not get enough of her fondness or her amusement or even her disapproval, because it wasn’t the indifference that she had shown him when she was a girl.

With Robb returned to her, with her favorite brother returned to her, would she once again regard Jon as the bastard half-brother that she never wanted?

It was nothing compared to his happiness that Robb was alive. _Nothing_ compared to the hope that afterwards glittered through him when he thought of Robb’s smile and Robb’s laugh and the snowflakes that had melted in Robb’s hair when they said their goodbyes. But still it was something that squirmed in his gut. Burrowed down there, reminding him. Taunting him with the knowledge that his first thought had been such a selfish one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song for this chapter is Something can Grow by Tony Anderson


	8. Robb III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robb returns to Winterfell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised: a slightly longer chapter! I'm actually WAY ahead of schedule with my editing, but I want to still take this a little slowly. Every 2-3 days for the most part seems to be going well, so I'll stick to that for now!

His heart had not stopped racing since Brienne woke him early and told him that they were less than a day’s ride from Winterfell.

He should have been pleased that they were so near the end of their journey. Perhaps he was, in a way; he was sick to death of riding. But mostly he felt terror, knowing what was waiting for him. He couldn’t imagine anything but their disappointment to find him returned to them. How was he supposed to stand before them? How was he supposed to beg their forgiveness? How was he supposed to even _look_ at them?

He tried to rehearse apologies as they rode. Explanations, too. Like there had to be a correct combination of words that would express everything he felt, all at once. Something that would help Sansa and Jon understand that he meant to do whatever he could to rectify the pain he had caused. He had been a poor king, and arguably a worse brother, and surely there was a way to let them know that he meant to try to be a better one.

No words he thought up seemed likely to be enough. He kept recalling those dreams where Jon stood between he and the rest of his siblings, ordering him banished for his failures. A thick, unwanted feeling had settled in his chest: Jon was right, in those dreams. Why _should_ they accept him back? Why _shouldn’t_ they bar him from even setting foot inside Winterfell again?

Brienne and Brynden seemed to push their horses faster the further they got along the familiar road to Winterfell. Brienne was probably eager to sleep in her own bed. She had Sansa waiting for her, and her duties to get back to. Robb couldn’t fault her for it, but he found himself lagging in response. Even his horse’s steps seemed to drag.

His horse’s steps outright faltered when their traveling party left the cover of the trees and started across the open, snowy plain. It was within sight now. _Winterfell_.

It looked exactly as he remembered. He had been so sure that it would be half-destroyed. A smoking ruin. Some sign of its recent troubles lingering on it, like a brand of his failures. Instead, it looked like _home._ The flags over the battlements and the banners that trailed down the walls bore a white wolf in place of a gray one, but it was otherwise unchanged.

The air was harsh with cold and stinging in his lungs, and the recent snowfall was lush on the ground. When they drew close enough, the gates opened, and Robb found himself hunching down in his borrowed cloak, as if to hide. Brienne waited ahead of him. Her posture was impeccable. Her conscience was clear.

_She chose correctly_ , Robb reminded himself. _And you did not._

They entered the courtyard slowly, the four horses scuffing across the snow and mud. There was no one waiting to greet him. Wildling eyes, curious and unimpressed, met his. The guards watched him. There were women gathering snow from outside. There were children gathering wood to bring to the hearths within. They eyed the party, and then they looked away again, disinterested. He didn’t see a single face he recognized. New guards and new servants who wouldn’t know him.

He dismounted his horse and nodded in thanks to the stableboy who came to lead her away. Brienne led her own mare, whispering to it as she went, soothing words with a gentle smile that Robb only barely saw. Robb was left standing in the muddy courtyard, searching for the familiar red of his sister’s hair, as if he thought he had missed it.

Brynden dismounted beside him, by Robb’s side begrudgingly, the way he had been since the wedding.

“Well,” he started to say, probably something dry and sarcastic and meant to be funny, digging into the wound left by the lack of interest in Robb’s return. Brynden was a loyal man, and a loyal uncle. He just also had his anger. Robb couldn’t blame him for that.

One of the side doors to the keep opened with a rushed slam, and Brynden stopped speaking. The wood echoed hollowly against the stone, and the courtyard went quiet, attention turned toward the sound; everyone here was plainly used to the suddenness of recent chaos. Their fear was fleeting, but it was obvious.

His sister stood just inside. Her cheeks were flushed pink. She had been running, he realized. Running to meet him.

She was taller now than she had been when Robb last saw her. Her face was sharper, the roundness of youth having been stripped away. Even her hair seemed darker. Closer now to his own auburn color. She was so different, but it was _Sansa,_ and he still knew her.

She faltered in the doorway, seeing him watching her, and she took one tentative step out into the mud. Her dress was stiff, black and gray and tight to the throat, clasped at her neck, and it gave the impression of a suit of armor, keeping her contained. _Hidden_. It was nothing like what she would have worn before.

She couldn’t hide her expression, though.

It wavered, her lips trembling around the slightest smile. She pushed gently forward through the gathering crowd of curious onlookers. She didn’t speak to any of them. She didn’t look away from Robb. She glided towards him like some kind of spirit, just as delicate as he remembered from when they were children. He tried to catalogue things to slow his pounding heart. Ways she was different and ways she was the same.

She stopped when she was just a few steps away. It was impossible, for a moment. To have been so long apart and to now have only a bit of dirt between them.

He opened his mouth to speak. To apologize. One of the thousand speeches he had rehearsed and had now forgotten. But Sansa’s expression crumbled entirely, the trembling lips opening faultlines in her face. She stumbled to him, and she flung her arms around him, and suddenly he was holding her.

She was so much taller than she used to be. She was almost level with him, and her arms were strong around him. She was a woman grown, just as he was a man, and they had been such children when they saw each other last. The years seemed endless, stretched between them. But she was with him. She was with him, and alive, and holding him. Not hating him and driving him away.

“You’re home,” she whispered in his ear.

“I’m home,” he said in reply.

The scuffed boots in the dirt were next, and it turned out that the time apart meant nothing. Robb would recognize his brother’s footsteps, no matter how much or little of a brother Jon might be. He lifted his head from Sansa’s shoulder and found Jon approaching. Jon's eyes were glimmering with happy tears, and his mouth was stretched in a smile that had been nearly unfamiliar even when they were children.

Robb extended an arm to him, and Jon moved forward, and then the three of them were hugging, standing in the center of the yard, surrounded by the curious people of Winterfell. Sansa brought Robb’s head down to her shoulder again, and he knew it was because she had noticed his tears.

His family. There had been so many of them, once.

Now they three were all that was left.

* * *

The northern lords demanded a meeting as soon as they were informed of Robb’s return.

“Of course they have,” Sansa said, rather snide, when Jon mentioned it hardly a quarter of an hour after Robb had been shown into the keep. Sansa had spent most of the time speaking with Brienne in another room while Jon awkwardly communicated with his Hand, always glancing over at Robb like he thought Robb would be offended that Jon was conducting a king’s business in front of a man who had lost the crown. Then at last it was the three of them, and Robb could see how much his siblings had changed while he was away.

It was odd to see them speaking at all. They had never spent much time together as children. It was especially odd to listen to the quick rhythm they had developed. It was almost like the one that Robb had once shared with Theon. Wry and sort of amused with each other while being annoyed with everyone else. They felt like a unit, and it was not a unit he ever would have expected, and it was not a unit in which he had any place.

“They’ll want you to take the crown,” Jon said. “You’re welcome to it.”

“I don’t want it,” Robb said.

“I would take it gladly, if I thought they would give it to me,” Sansa interjected, which made Jon smile a little.

“I’d give it to you in a heartbeat,” he said. He was so much softer with her, and it reminded Robb again of the stories that had made their way to Riverrun: the tragedies that had befallen the Lady of Winterfell. Brynden had grumbled about loose tongues and only fools believing tavern tales, but some of them _must_ have been true. Jon was too careful with her. It made Robb anxious again. Neither of them had yet mentioned the mistakes he had made. The wonder of his survival was still too fresh for that. But it wouldn’t last forever, and he apparently had much to answer for.

“The lords will never agree to name me queen while Robb still lives,” Sansa said. “But thank you, Jon.”

She looked back at Robb when she was finished smiling at Jon, and her smile faded slowly.

“They’ll choose you,” she said.

“I don’t want them to,” Robb insisted. He felt like a child again. They were in their father’s old office. It was covered in missives and books and maps pinned to the walls. There was nothing left of Ned Stark in this space. Robb’s skin prickled, uneasiness settling in him to see something so familiar turned so foreign.

“It doesn’t matter what you want,” Sansa said. “A lot of them won’t be happy, but the majority will choose you. You’ll have to rule.”

“I lost them the war,” Robb said, desperate, like _she_ was the one he was arguing with. But Sansa only shook her head. Her giddy joy to see him again had faded, and it left a hard, determined steel in its place.

“Yes, you did” she said. “But that isn’t the most important thing to them.”

* * *

Brynden was the one who stood in the meeting and suggested crowning Robb in Jon’s place. Robb would have felt more betrayed by it if he hadn’t always known that his uncle cared only for Catelyn Tully’s line. The fondness that Brynden had for Robb was nothing compared to what he had felt for his niece, and there had been a wall around Brynden’s heart since Robb had survived what Catelyn had not. Brynden seemed to like Sansa, though, which was no surprise. Actually, a lot of the older men who made up the lords' council seemed to like Sansa. Most of them treated her courteously, like a daughter or granddaughter. Petyr Baelish was different.

Littlefinger was standing at the back of the hall when Brynden raised the cry to re-crown Robb, and Robb could see that the suggestion displeased him. He knew little enough about the man, except that Jon had glowered at him earlier, and that he watched Sansa in a way that Robb didn’t like. It was enough to form an impression.

With all the northern lords bickering and shouting at each other about which of the two Stark sons had a better claim to the throne—it was Robb, obviously, but the ones who hated him for losing the war were doing a fair job of finding excuses for it to be Jon—a single shrill voice cut through the melee. A little girl, a _child_ , stood up out of her chair. Swathed in furs, she reminded Robb of the stuffed animals his mother used to make for he and Sansa, back when she had the time because she only had two children to look after and not five.

“House Mormont stood with House Stark. We fought with House Stark. We did it because I believe in House Stark.” Robb had to struggle not to smile. He tried to remember if Arya had ever said _anything_ with the amount of gravitas that this child spoke with. Mostly he remembered her sticking out her tongue behind Sansa’s back. “And they haven’t let us down. When Jon Snow took the throne, my men wanted me to return home, but I stayed. I knew that he was an untested king, and I wanted to be sure that I had made the right choice in supporting him. I’ve seen nothing that displeases me so far. And Lady Sansa has sat beside him. She has taken on the task of rebuilding Winterfell and preparing for the coming winter much more admirably than I thought she would. Which brings me to my point.” She drew herself up taller, smiling at the three Starks at their table. “Whichever king sits on the throne, Lady Stark will sit beside him, and the other brother will sit there too. If you fuckers want a trueborn heir, Robb Stark is your king. But the Starks will rule together. That’s the way it should be.”

Robb turned his head and met Sansa’s eyes. He arched his eyebrows, only slightly incredulous, and Sansa allowed half a smile and a chiding expression that reminded him of their mother before she turned back to address the child.

“Thank you, Lady Mormont,” she said. “And you’re right. Whichever of us is on the throne, the others will support them. In our father’s name.” She turned her head toward Brynden with a small, sad smile. “And in my mother’s. My parents ruled the north fairly for decades, and my father’s parents did the same before them. Now that we have been restored to our home, we will do everything to see that peace is brought back to the north. And when the time is right, we will defend ourselves against the claims of the south.”

Lyanna Mormont liked that. She grinned a wolfish grin and slammed her tiny fist down on the table. A child’s fist, but a woman’s enthusiasm.

The roar went up again, the lords arguing and shouting back and forth, but Lyanna Mormont sat back, satisfied that whoever was chosen, there would be no wrong answer.

* * *

In the end, Robb’s re-crowning was unceremonious. They were all too tired and too cynical to make much of a _thing_ of it, and Robb probably would have refused to allow them to, anyway. It wasn’t the same crown he wore during his first campaign. He assumed that one had been melted down somewhere after being paraded around on the head of Grey Wind, stitched to the shoulders of whatever poor Tully soldier was mistaken for Robb in the chaos of the betrayal at the wedding.

The lords, even the ones who didn’t want Robb to be remade King, insisted on _some_ kind of celebration, and Sansa agreed reluctantly. She and Jon exchanged a smile and a slight roll of the eyes that spoke of a joke made privately, and there was a hollowness inside Robb’s chest when he saw it. He was an outsider here, in his own home. Maybe he would always be an outsider here now.

He kept to himself during the feast as much as possible. The only people who sought to speak to him were the people who had supported him. The ones who _hadn’t_ stayed away, looking balefully between he and Sansa and Jon as if trying to detect some resentment between the three of them. Some proof that they had been right to try and choose something else. Sansa smiled at everyone and moved calmly between groups of people. She appeared at his side often to say a few quick words of empty courtesy to whoever he happened to be speaking with. She was so like the Sansa he remembered in those moments, but it was unsettling because he knew it to be false. Her eyes were sharper than her smile, and she was always watching everyone at once, taking in threats. She reminded him of the Kingslayer, the one time Robb saw him in action on the battlefield. Handsome and golden and _desperate_ to strike the killing blow against Robb. He had been cutting through Robb’s defenders in the Whispering Wood, and his eyes and head were constantly on alert, analyzing the fight with a faster speed than a normal man should possess. The stories about the Kingslayer always denigrated the empty-headed battle commander, walking into a trap and getting himself captured, but Robb knew better than that. The Kingslayer’s sarcasm and indolence were very carefully crafted. Sansa’s blank mask and cool politeness were the same.

He watched her as he sipped at his ale and pretended to be honored that he had been chosen to be king again. He watched her, and he watched Brienne, never far behind her. Brienne wore her concern openly, and through it, Robb began to see _Sansa’s_ concerns. The way she carefully sidestepped any man’s attempt to dance with her. The way she tensed any time a man dared to lay a hand on her arm when they were speaking, unless that man was Jon or Brynden or Lord Royce, from the Vale. He noticed, too, the way Lord Baelish lingered on the outskirts of the dance, and he noticed the way that he watched Sansa, and the way that Sansa managed to never meet his eye.

“She’s stronger than she looks,” Jon said from beside him suddenly.

“I forgot how quiet you can be,” Robb grumbled. Jon grinned at him, but it faded quickly.

“I know you’re worried for her.”

“I have been.”

“I wish you would have sent word.” It was the only sign of censure Jon had given since Robb arrived. It was almost a relief. Robb knew that it couldn’t last, the hand-waving of his faults. He knew that eventually one of them would mention it, and then they would have to _talk_ about it. It wasn’t that he was ready for it, but he would rather get it over with.

“I didn’t think,” he started. He tried to think of a less pathetic way to say it, but nothing came to him, so he had to admit, “I didn’t think it would do anyone any good. Having me back.”

Jon made a sound that seemed at first noncommittal, but then Robb realized it was a laugh. Quiet, wry. Jon met his eyes and gave him a head-tilted expression.

“Neither did I,” he admitted. “The Red Woman disagreed.”

“So it’s true then. That you were dead.”

“Aye,” Jon said. “Were you?”

“I don’t know,” Robb answered. “I felt like I was.”

_I felt like I should have stayed that way,_ he didn’t say. He looked at Jon again and saw that Jon was watching Sansa with the same careful eye that Brienne had on her. For all his talk about Sansa’s strength, plainly he had the same fears Robb did. _My brother_ , Robb thought, because it was true, no matter what else there was. Brotherhood wasn’t just a shared mother or a shared father. He knew that now. Thinking of Theon, he also had to concede that _brotherhood_ wasn’t always forever, but Jon wasn’t Theon. Jon wasn’t Theon, and Robb could trust him with anything. He had learned not to trust so easily, but Jon was different. Jon was Jon. It was suddenly intolerable that he didn’t know the truth.

“Jon, there’s…I need to tell you something,” he said. “But not here.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song for this chapter is Run Run Run, Phillip Lengeling Piano Version


	9. Daenerys I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daenerys lands at Dragonstone, and she and Tyrion talk about family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just imagine me sweating nervously as I post this chapter because Dany is the character I am LEAST confident in my ability to write!

Whenever Dany dreamed of her first arrival in Westeros, she had imagined it would feel _indescribable_. Some song in her blood. Some quickening of her heart. _Something_ that would give credence to a young girl’s fantasies of ruling over a land that was her birthright. _Destiny_. Surely _destiny_ had a feeling. Some strong, vibrating energy that would course through her when she stepped foot on Westerosi soil at last.

She stood in the sand. She lowered her hand to touch it. Westeros. Home. Dragonstone, where she was born.

She didn’t feel anything.

Vaguely nauseas from the rocking of the sea, perhaps. Terrified. This was what she had been fighting for, and it was upon her. But it was nothing like what she had wanted.

She rose and turned to look at her people. Varys and Tyrion and Missandei and Grey Worm were all watching her, waiting for her reaction. Did they want her to feel something, too? She swallowed back her nerves. She smiled at them.

Varys was the one who led the way through the castle. Her people were already hard at work transforming it back into the Targaryen seat of old. Removing any sign of Stannis Baratheon. Dany watched the way they stripped the stag from the walls and put the dragon in its place. She wondered how quickly the Baratheon servants did the same after her family was toppled.

This was the right choice. The only choice. She’d left things unfinished in Meereen, and she felt guilty for that, but it had been impossible to untangle. She couldn’t have stayed there forever. She hadn’t even _liked_ Meereen, with its confounding politics and its endless betrayals. She hated trying to become something she wasn’t, hiding her dragons away to make the people think her less of a barbarian, as though _their_ barbarism wasn’t glaring. Leaving was the only thing that could have fixed it. And Westeros needed her.

_Does it? Or do you need Westeros?_

She’d asked herself the question dozens of times as they sailed to Dragonstone. When the boat rocked so much she couldn’t sleep. When they lost people to a terrible storm. When her people went hungry and got sick. She asked herself and could not find an answer. Perhaps it was both. She had given up so much to get here. She couldn’t abandon her path now.

_If I look back, I am lost._

And yet…coming to Westeros, preparing to take back her family’s throne. Was this not also looking back? Should she have struck out in the opposite direction? Should she have been more thorough with her conquering of other lands? The places she had taken had reverted back to their old ways so soon after she left them, and she had given it up as inevitable, but what if it hadn’t been? If she was going to rule Westeros, should she not have given actual _ruling_ more of a shot?

She didn’t know anymore. She had been a child when she first began to dream of retaking Westeros. A child who longed to follow her father. Avenge her father. Fulfill the legacy that her brother never had the chance to. She had once been so sure of herself, of her purpose.

She wasn’t that child any longer.

She must have been more naive as a girl than she ever realized, to expect that Westeros would fall to their knees for hope of a Targaryen come again. She had believed Illyrio when he claimed it, just as Viserys had. She had believed that the smallfolk suffered beneath Baratheon rule and longed for the day that the Targaryens would return to free them. She understood better now that smallfolk didn’t care _who_ ruled them. The smallfolk prayed for a good harvest. They prayed for a good master, or a good ruler, or a good god or goddess. They prayed for the health of their families.

The smallfolk didn’t care about the great houses. They would not care about her dragons, except to be afraid of them. They would not care about _her_ except as someone who might make their lives easier. And if she didn’t? If she failed them? They would hate her for that just as she once dreamed they hated the Usurper.

* * *

Tyrion found her in the war room. Stannis Baratheon’s tokens were still spread across the map table. It was her family’s again, as it had been once. It should have felt better to reclaim it. She should feel _more_.

She found herself wondering where it had gone wrong for Stannis. Studying his intentions on the map, trying to puzzle it out. She would have to ask Varys or Tyrion for more information about his campaign. She hardly understood why. _If I look back, I am lost_. It was done. It had happened. Still, perhaps there was something she could learn. Avoid his failings, at least.

“Your grace,” Tyrion said, calling her attention. He was looking at her curiously, in a way that made her suddenly self-conscious. Why _shouldn’t_ she study the would-be king’s choices? What was there to be embarrassed about? She felt her defenses rising. She hated it, this feeling like she always had to perform. For her people. For her advisors. Even for her friends. She wanted to _rest_.

“What is it, Tyrion?” she asked, gentle to make up for the guilt she felt along with her annoyance with him. It wasn’t _Tyrion’s_ fault that she felt less than she wished she did.

“I just wanted to make sure you were settling in,” Tyrion answered, and she felt her annoyance bleeding away at the expression on his face. He was lying, of course. He had noticed her dissatisfaction with Dragonstone and was using this quiet moment to check in on her. A surge of affection for him washed over her. He had been a good choice for a Hand, even if sometimes she wondered what she had been thinking when she offered him the position.

“I thought it would feel more like home,” she admitted. Tyrion raised himself up to sit on a stool that had been pulled up to the War Table. It was shorter than it should be, for a man of his height, and Daenerys made a note to find him a better one. There had to be _something_ in this dreary place. She continued, “they’ve all followed me here for a purpose. I mean to fulfill that purpose. But I thought it would mean more to _me_ to be here. It’s meant to be my birthright.”

“It _is_ your birthright,” Tyrion agreed. “But you must still take it away from my sister before you can truly call it home. Perhaps that’s what worries you.”

“I don’t know if it’s worry,” Dany said. She allowed herself to be a young girl again. She examined her own thoughts in a way she normally didn’t allow herself to do. “I think it’s disappointment.”

Tyrion smiled at that, and he leaned over to cover her hand briefly with his own.

“Dragonstone isn’t quite to my tastes either,” he admitted before leaning back and standing up on the stool so he could draw a finger along the short distance from Dragonstone to Kings Landing. “Well, Kings Landing isn’t either, but at least it’s lively.”

“You were Hand of the King there, once,” she said. “Tell me about it.”

“Acting Hand,” he reminded her with a fond smile. He sat back on the stool and considered. “Kings Landing is…well. Kings Landing is two cities, really. Or three, maybe four. I suppose it’s the same in every land.”

“Are you talking in riddles, or just trying to annoy me?”

“Trying to make it sound nicer than it really is, I think,” Tyrion admitted. “Kings Landing is a cesspool, if you want my opinion of it, but that doesn’t exactly make it sound enticing.”

“I don’t need it to be enticing. I would be surprised if it _was_ a good place to live, with your sister in charge of it.”

“It isn’t just my sister, though I’m loath to give her even that much praise, and I’ll never admit it outside this room. Kings Landing has been mired in its own filth for a long time. Any place you have wealthy men vying for control of what other wealthy men have, it turns into a nightmare of corruption. Noble men like Ned Stark last less than half a year before losing their heads, while ignoble men like my father and Petyr Baelish thrive, because they have enough coin to buy the Goldcloaks to do their evil deeds. And that’s just the nobility! The merchants are cutthroat. The beggars are murderers. The children starve. The Goldcloaks profit, the Kingsguard stands by and allows it. Nobody wins but the king, or the queen, I suppose. Until they’re no longer winning anymore, and someone else takes the Iron Throne and does nothing to fix it.”

He watched her, trying to pretend he wasn’t, and she knew that he expected her to mention his brother. She didn’t, though she filed it away for later in the conversation.

“Your initial two cities you mentioned,” she said. “The wealthy and the rest?”

“Yes. As it is everywhere. My own frustrations with trying to wrangle the city have jaded me, but in truth Kings Landing isn’t particularly special. All cities, all kingdoms, have that divide. The masses and the masters. A good ruler will have to rule both, of course, but neither will welcome you.”

She nodded. She remembered being the girl who believed that Westeros would rise against the Baratheons at the first sign of the dragons come again. She knew better now. If they knelt to her, it would be out of fear or a lack of better options. It would be because she had forced them to their knees. It may be her birthright, but she wasn’t the only one who thought so. Cersei Lannister must feel it was her right too, for outliving the sons who had worn the crown before her. She was a fool for thinking it, but she probably thought Dany was a fool for thinking the throne should be hers because her father had sat in it before being overthrown.

Perhaps that was all these wars really amounted to: everyone thinking the other claimants were fool for thinking theirs was the strongest.

“We have to take the crown from your sister before I can worry about what I'll do when I wear it,” she said. She had her doubts and her discomforts and her wonderings about why she even _wanted_ this cold, empty throne and the strange kingdom that contained it, but her people had followed her here, and she would not disappoint them now by being too careful or not strong enough to commit to the course she had chosen long ago. “What would you advise, Tyrion?”

Tyrion considered, though she knew that he had likely _been_ considering for weeks now, all the way from Meereen.

“My family isn’t popular,” he said finally. “Not with the smallfolk, and certainly not with most of the houses, great or small. But you’ll need a majority of the great houses on your side if you’re to take the throne with as little rebellion as possible. Some of the smaller ones will be loyal to my sister for the simple reason that she feuds with most of the bigger ones. A smart head of a small house might hope to take a castle and a loftier title if Cersei keeps her throne. You already have Dorne on your side, and that’s nothing to sneer at. Highgarden as well, though they bring less to the war table than I would like. If Yara and Theon Greyjoy are able to take back the Iron Islands, their ships may make a considerable difference. But the others...the Freys are my sister’s allies for now, but they can probably be swayed. I’m not sure how much they would be worth, and I wouldn’t advise trusting them. The last man who did lost his head for it, and he lost the war as well. If the whispers Varys has heard are true, then I would say that you should send ravens to Winterfell. The Starks have more reason to hate my sister than anyone, and Jon Snow commands an army of Wildlings, along with the Night’s Watch. Petyr Baelish controls the Eyrie, and the army of the Vale isn’t so small, either. Another untrustworthy sort, but he responds well to flattery and gold, and we have plenty of both. Those two armies combined could be worth a lot.”

Daenerys looked at the map on the table in front of her. Her eyes traced the locations as her Hand said them. The north felt very far away. Prohibitively far, especially since Varys had speculated that the Starks would have taken heavy losses in reclaiming their home. Still, perhaps Tyrion was right. They would perhaps have a sympathy with Dany’s aims. Not only because they hated Cersei Lannister, but because they knew what it was like to be driven out, and they knew what it was like to want to return home again.

“It’s good advice,” she admitted. “You were married to Sansa Stark, you said. Do you think that will help our case or hurt it?”

“Our marriage was never consummated. I never touched her, and I never pressured her. I can’t say that she liked me any. She _did_ leave me in the lion's den and run off when I was accused of murdering my nephew. But…I don’t think I gave her any true reason to hate me. I was clear that I didn’t want the marriage any more than she did.”

“So it could be good,” Dany teased. “Or bad. Depending on her side of the tale.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Tyrion admitted with a grimace. “But either way, I can assure you that her feelings for my sister are much less complicated. If it came to a choice, she would ally with me. I’m certain of it.

“And your brother?” Dany asked. She tried to sound casual, but it was difficult, and she knew she hadn’t quite managed it; Tyrion’s gaze shuttered, and he looked away. His blankness was a poor attempt. Dany found it curious, his constant reluctance to speak about his brother, though he must have understood why she was interested in knowing more about him. The Kingslayer. The man who had killed her father. She had wondered about him for her entire life. Her own brother used to tell stories about him, and how fearsome and terrible he was. Other children dreamed of grumpkins and snarks hiding under their beds, but for Dany it was always The Kingslayer with his sharp smile and his gleaming sword dripping with her father’s blood, come to finish the job.

“I don’t know how Sansa feels about my brother,” Tyrion said quietly. “I don’t know if they ever interacted. If they did, it was probably not encouraging. Jaime never knows how to be serious, and he often says the wrong thing.”

“I’m sure he was serious enough when he put his sword through my father’s back,” Dany said, prodding deeper, enjoying the way Tyrion squirmed under her scrutiny. He was so good at slipping away from her questions, but she had him pinned now.

“Is it my true thoughts you want?” he asked. “Or more platitudes about my loyalty to you?”

“I would have your true thoughts always. If I wanted people who bow to me, I have no shortage of those. If I wanted someone to tell me only that I am doing things correctly, I would have kept Daario with me. I want the truth.”

Tyrion sighed, and he nodded. He didn’t seem convinced, but he cleared his throat and began.

“Barristan Selmy would never admit it, because he was an old fool who swore oaths and thought that was all that mattered. But I’m sure he told you enough. That your father was mad. That near the end of his life, he bore little resemblance to the man he had been before.”

“Yes,” Dany said, only slightly warning. “I’ve heard his thoughts.”

“You and I should both know by now that some aspects of family are better _learned_ than emulated. Learned if only for the purpose of avoiding the same mistakes. You are not your father, and I am not mine. I rather like that we have that in common. We both know what it means to shed the shackles of family ties and to want to do better. I don’t mention your father to upset you. I mention your father to defend my brother’s choice. He was my big brother, and when it happened, I assumed that he must have done it for some noble reason, because I loved him. I worshipped him. I believed him capable of any good thing and absolutely nothing bad. I’m older now, and not quite so foolish, and now I look back, and my brother’s choice looks more like the panicked decision of a man not very far past childhood. A boy, really. Left alone with a mad king who had already slaughtered the head and the heir to a great house, and who was every day receding from rationality. I don’t know why my brother killed your father, your grace, but he was never quite the same afterward. He turned sharp where before he had been strong. Brittle where he had been unyielding. He dreamed of knighthood and songs when he was a child, and he was always the one to tell them to me in my nursery, but afterwards he’d laugh at the thought of true knights. He never told me what he was thinking when he broke his vows and killed his king. I never asked. I trusted that it was for the right reason, and I have never questioned it. He freed me from the dungeons in Kings Landing for the same reason. I don’t claim that he’s an entirely good man. He has done things and supported things that I cannot dismiss. But he is not the man I think you imagine when you think of him, and I hope that you can at least believe _that_.”

Dany could not help but think of her own changing views of her brother as they grew. Viserys was everything when she was a child. He gave her presents and read her stories and told her tales of their family and how they were going to one day take revenge. Perhaps he was never as perfect in Dany’s eyes as Tyrion claimed his brother was in his, but it was difficult to say, with so much time passed. She was remembering things wrong already. Softening memories so they felt less terrible. Still, she understood Tyrion. The desperate look on his face. The way he needed her to understand. She loved her brother that way too, once. Sometimes she wished she still could. That he had not allowed his pettiness and his selfishness to ruin him.

“I believe you,” she said. “And I believe that when it’s time, you’ll make the right choice.”

Tyrion nodded.

“I will,” he said, unblinking. Whatever the right choice might have meant to him, he was certainly set on making it.

“Send a raven to Winterfell,” she said. “Let’s see what the north has to offer.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song for this chapter is Arsonist's Lullaby by Hozier 
> 
> (because I'm very funny) 
> 
> (but also I like the lyrics for her)


	10. Sansa II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robb reveals the truth he learned from Howland Reed, and Sansa takes some steps to diminish Littlefinger's power.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "angel", you may be thinking, incredulously. "are you seriously going to reveal this important Jon truth during a Sansa chapter?" and the answer is yes, but Jon's chapter is next, so his POV reaction is coming tomorrow lmao.

She followed her brothers at first without invitation.

She wasn’t sure what they were doing, sneaking away from the feast so early. She knew it was likely nothing important. She trusted them. She _trusted_ them. She did. She trusted them more than any other men.

But they left the hall together, quietly and secretively, and so she followed.

Before, trust meant something different than what it had come to mean. Trust used to mean that she could watch her brothers leave the room and not automatically wonder what they were discussing that had to be said away from her. Perhaps it was only Littlefinger that had changed her. Taught her that she could no longer afford to trust in the same way. But she knew that the queen deserved some credit. She had trusted Cersei, and she had loved Cersei, and Cersei had burned her for it.

She just always needed to _know_ , now. She never used to understand why kings and queens needed spymasters to work within their own kingdoms. She never used to understand why Lord Baelish was paying so much gold to so many people who seemed to constantly be reporting on _each other_ more than they were reporting on his enemies.

She understood now: trust was a beautiful thing, but certainty was safer.

Robb led Jon towards what used to be their father’s office, and Sansa walked faster to catch up with them. Both brothers turned to look at her, but only Jon smiled. He inclined his head.

“Enough dancing?” he asked, polite. Almost wry, like he was trying to be funny. She met Robb’s eyes.

“Where are you going?” she asked. “Everyone will be wondering.”

“And you thought _also_ leaving would help that?” Robb asked. She couldn’t say why the joking tone made her so angry, but it did. She drew herself up taller, frowning at him. She was glad to have him back. She was glad to have him alive. But if he thought that he was going to keep secrets from her…

_Jon is mine now too,_ she wanted to say, like a bratty little girl. _He isn’t just yours and Arya’s and Bran’s. He’s mine now too._

“Whatever it is that you have to tell me,” Jon said swiftly. “Sansa should hear it.”

She noticed now that there was a tension in Jon that hadn’t been there when she spoke with him at the celebration. Was it possible that he wanted her along for support? No. She dismissed the thought. Jon would take on the whole of the world by himself if it meant he didn’t have to inconvenience her. He knew she felt excluded, and he wanted to make sure she didn’t.

“I should hear it,” Sansa agreed, because Robb hesitated.

“All right,” he said. “Quickly. Before we’re noticed.”

Even following him, even entering their father’s office with him, even seeing him sit at the desk that their father used to sit at every day when he was dealing with the most boring parts of running Winterfell, it was still so impossible to have Robb back in front of her. She’d had only a few sips of wine during the feast, but those sips had been potent enough to make it even _less_ real. It was Robb. Her big brother. She loved him, and she had mourned him, and she had resented him, but he was _here._ Alive to be loved and resented once again without the grief to color every part of it.

It had become habit for Sansa to hide her true face behind a mask, always afraid that Lord Baelish would see more than she wanted him to and would use it against her somehow. But it was only the three of them now in this room, and she could let the mask drop. She could look at Robb as much as she wanted. Actually, she couldn’t quite bring herself to look away from him. _If you do_ , the stupid little girl that still sometimes lived inside her insisted, _he will disappear, and you will realize that this has all been some horrible dream_.

But Robb in her dreams never looked like this.

When she was in Kings Landing, she would dream of Robb bursting into her room. He would be holding a blood-covered sword, and he would throw Joffrey’s head down at the foot of her bed. He would open his arms and lift her into them. He would carry her out of that awful place, down the steps of the Red Keep, and through the streets of Kings Landing. He would be Robb just as she remembered. Still a boy, but somehow enough to fight through every terrible person in Kings Landing who tried to stop him from saving her. The Kingsguard would all be dead at Robb’s feet as he walked. He would tell Sansa not to look, but she would have to. She would have to see. Cersei would be dead, too, and her father, and her brothers. Robb would walk with his head high, and she would love him with all her heart.

The Robb who had been returned to her was not half as glittering or bright as the boy she had dreamed. She wondered if he was disappointed in _her_ differences as much as she was in his.

For a few moments, when she ran to him in the courtyard and hugged him, she was that girl again, and Robb was that boy. But those moments had faded quickly, and then she saw the truth. The dark circles under his eyes. The way he seemed leaner than before—not in the way that Jon was lean with fighting strength, but lean in a way that came with a long illness. The way he seemed distant, detached somehow.

He was not the boy she remembered. He was not he big brother she remembered. Maybe part of her confusion was because there was still so much anger within her that she had not allowed herself to speak aloud, and she felt she couldn’t express it to this stranger.

Robb leaned his elbows against the desk when he sat, after he shed his cloak. It made him look smaller, hunched over. Sansa sat across from him. Jon took the time to build up the fire in the hearth, and then he took the chair beside Sansa. All of it was slow and purposeful, as was his way, and Sansa could tell he was trying to postpone this as long as possible.

Sansa had been sure since Robb returned that it was too much good to last, and it seemed Jon felt the same way. Blessings like this didn’t _happen_. Not to their family. Not without some sort of payment swiftly following.

“What I say here cannot leave this room,” Robb said. “Not until we decide what we want to do about it.” He looked between Sansa and Jon with a pointedness that Sansa would have found insulting if she wasn’t so worried.

“We promise,” she said, because Jon didn’t say anything. He met her eyes, plain concern on his face, but then he nodded, too.

Robb stood again, and he paced towards the fire. Another one of his blank moments? But no, he turned back to face them. He was visibly bracing himself for what would come next.

“When Uncle Brynden took me out of The Twins, we went north instead of south. Winterfell had fallen to the Ironborn, so we would find no safety there, but Brynden knew that the Freys would be marching to Riverrun, and that they would catch up with us, as wounded as I was. We went instead to Greywater Watch, because he knew that Howland Reed was a friend of father’s. Brynden and four other men took me to safety on the backs of their horses. I was near death for all of it. I still don’t know how I survived. I don’t know _why_.”

“To return to us,” Sansa couldn’t help but say. Robb shook his head. Sansa’s mask went back up. She pretended that the rejection didn’t hurt.

“You didn’t need me,” Robb said. “You still don’t need me.” He smiled, but it was a bitter grimace of an expression. He continued, “Howland Reed was with father during the war. They fought together. They went to Dorne together.” Robb took a sharp, deep breath. “He told me something that father…that he and father did during the war. Something that father never told anyone. He lied to us. All of us. For years.”

“Father?” Jon asked doubtfully. Sansa didn’t know what Robb was going to say. She had no idea what he could be talking about. Dread pooled in her stomach anyway. Robb’s eyes were entirely on Jon, now. Almost pleading.

“They went to Dorne to retrieve his sister, Aunt Lyanna. She was being held there by Rhaegar, or at least that’s what they thought. When they arrived, they fought the Kingsguard, just like the stories say. Howland and father were the only ones left alive at the end, and then father went into the tower. When he came out, he was carrying a child.”

“Robb,” Sansa gasped. Jon had grown very still beside her. She reached for his hand, but it was limp in hers, and cold.

“Her son,” Robb continued. “ _Rhaegar’s_ son. Before she died, she made father promise that he would protect him from Robert. So father claimed him as his own.”

Sansa finally looked at Jon, tried to see his expression. There was only a blank, uncertain shock. Like he understood that Robb must have been talking of him but couldn’t quite understand how that could be true.

“Me,” he finally said, breaking the silence.

“Yes,” Robb said.

“I’m not…I’m… _gods_.”

“Here, Jon,” Sansa said, getting swiftly to her feet and pouring him some wine from the bottle by the sideboard. Jon took the goblet she gave him, but he didn’t drink. He looked between she and Robb, and she knew that he must have been close to panic. Sansa was close to it herself. She poured herself a goblet too, and unlike Jon she sipped from it liberally.

Jon. Her cousin. Jon her _cousin_. Not her half-brother. Not her brother at all. She always said he wasn’t her brother, and she was _right_. She felt like she might be sick, and she swallowed down more wine.

“Gods,” she said, and Jon’s eyes flickered to hers, desperate and needing comfort that she wasn’t sure how to give. “We need to…” she started. She tried to think. “We need to figure out how to break the news. If we’re seen as hiding it…”

“Sansa,” Robb said, sharp and annoyed, like he would have when they were children and he thought she was ruining some play. She glared back at him, but his eyes were on Jon, and Sansa deflated. He was right, of course. She was doing it again. Focusing too much on results and not enough on what people felt.

_I’m broken_ , she thought. _Forgive me, Jon. I’m broken, and I don’t know how to offer comfort the way I used to. I don’t know how to love the way I could before._

“I’m sorry,” she said. She went and sat back down in her chair, and she leaned in towards his. She covered his hands with her own where they rested numbly on his knees. “Jon, I’m so sorry. But you’re still our brother. You’re still _you_. This doesn’t change anything.”

“It changes everything,” Jon insisted, and he pulled his hands away and stood, putting distance between them.

“It doesn’t have to,” Robb argued.

“The northern lords barely tolerated the _Bastard of Winterfell_. How do you think they’ll feel about the bastard of the last Targaryen prince? Rhaegar Targaryen stole and raped Lyanna. That’s the story that everyone knows. That’s the story they remember. And if I’m his son, that _monster’s_ son…”

“You’re _her_ son too, Jon,” Sansa insisted. She went to him, stopped him from going any further, put her hands out and caught his arms, holding to them firmly when he tried to pull away again. “The north hasn’t forgotten Lyanna, and you’re her son too.”

“And you’re our brother,” Robb agreed. “No matter what happens next.”

“They’ll ask me to leave. They’ll want me to go back to the Wall.”

“They won’t,” Sansa said.

“You know they will. Littlefinger will…”

“I won’t let him! Jon, please. We don’t have to make any decisions tonight. Our heads will be clearer tomorrow. All right?” She looked at him hopefully, and he nodded. Sullen and a bit annoyed, but at least he wasn’t trying to run. She squeezed his arms again before turning back to look at Robb, who was still standing by the fire, looking sick.

“I’ll make your excuses,” she said. “Please, just…don’t do anything rash. Either of you.”

With a huff of annoyance, Robb nonetheless nodded, and Jon mirrored him. Sansa left without further words. She couldn’t think of the right ones to say.

She headed back to the feast, because she had to, but her limbs felt ungainly, shaky from more than just the quick consumption of wine. Brienne was waiting for her in the hall, of course. She looked concerned, though she hid it behind the stoic mask that she thought Sansa couldn’t see behind.

“Are you all right, my lady?” she asked.

“Yes, Brienne, thank you,” Sansa answered. It didn’t sound convincing, but Brienne didn’t question it. Sansa appreciated that. She felt foolish, childish, her fingers fisted in the fabric of her dress because she needed something to hold on to. “I need to return to the feast.”

“Of course, my lady,” Brienne said.

Brienne melted away into the crowd once Sansa was back in the midst of her people. Very few of them stopped her to ask after Robb and Jon. Whenever they did, Sansa gave them the pretty explanations they wanted, talking of Robb’s exhaustion and Jon’s eagerness speak with his brother alone. It was an easy thing to believe, and the lords believed it. Many of them had had brothers once, too. They nodded wisely and murmured their support. It was easy for men to understand: _brotherhood_. They felt it was their arena, and it made sense for Sansa to be barred from it. Only Lady Mormont seemed suspicious, but she eventually just rolled her eyes and said something about boys being idiots at every age, and then she wandered off.

Littlefinger waited, but of course he eventually made his approach. He probably wanted to confirm that her neither of her brothers—her brother and her _cousin_ , she remembered with a near-hysterical jolt—were coming back. He plainly felt safer when Jon wasn’t around.

“Sansa,” he said, as if he hadn’t been looking for her, as if he had just chanced upon her. “I haven’t had a chance to speak with you since your brother returned. What happy news for the Starks. Your mother would be so happy to see him returned safely.”

Sansa gritted her teeth. _My mother_ , she thought, _is dead. And I am not my mother._

“She would be,” she agreed instead. “It was good of Uncle Brynden to stay with him for so long. I can’t imagine how they survived.”

“By the grace of the gods, surely,” Littlefinger said, like it was a private joke they shared, somehow. Most of the things he said to her were like that. Like it was something she was supposed to understand. Sansa smiled.

“Surely,” she repeated.

“It was your uncle the Blackfish I wanted to discuss with you,” Littlefinger said. Ah, so there it was. He moved closer, more private, as if wanting to tell her something deeply secret. His hand cupped her elbow, exerting almost no pressure, but managing to make Sansa feel like she was caged anyway. A pretty, caged bird, exactly as he wanted her. She refused to back down, though she felt her chest constrict at the nearness of him.

_If you need her, Brienne is nearby. She’ll come if you look at her. That’s all you have to do. Don’t be afraid._

“What about my uncle?” she asked. She kept her voice low, like his, and he smiled at her as if pleased by her quickness in picking up on his desire for secrecy.

“He’s ambitious,” Littlefinger said. “And I would caution you against trusting him. I know that I have been mistaken before, and you have every right to question my judgement, but on this, I’m much more certain. I was fostered at Riverrun, remember, and I knew your mother’s family well.”

_Yes_ , Sansa thought, wryly amused by all of it as Littlefinger continued speaking. _Of course that is what you would say._

* * *

She spoke to Lord Royce, afterwards, and she mentioned the possibility of sending Brynden back to the Vale to look after Robert Arryn and work on calming some of the chaos that still lingered after Lady Lysa's death. It wasn’t a very difficult sell. The lords of the Vale trusted Brynden more than they had ever trusted Littlefinger, and they would easily fall in line behind him. Lord Royce was not yet certain of Robb, but he _was_ certain of Sansa. He would follow her. Between he and Brynden, they would have the support of the Vale, and she would no longer have to indulge Littlefinger in his schemes.

Littlefinger’s influence would wane the longer he was away from those prickly, inconstant lords, and with someone like the Blackfish back among them, they would be sure to realize that they had been won over by empty flattery and promises of grandeur that had never materialized. Littlefinger would think her choice to remove Brynden a foolish little girl’s response to his warnings, not a powerplay. He might be annoyed by it, but his blindspot was _her._ He would mostly be pleased that Brynden would no longer be around to interfere. He wouldn’t have warned her if he wasn’t afraid of what influence her mother’s uncle might have with her.

Brynden, when she quickly summarized her aims as she pretended to chance upon him during a circuit around the hall, was amused by the idea, especially when he heard that she primarily wanted to send him because she didn’t trust Petyr Baelish.

“Good,” he said brusquely. “I knew you were a smart girl. I’ll do what I can to make sure that the Vale stays loyal to you and Robb.”

Sansa nodded, and she smiled at him before quickly moving away so that Littlefinger didn’t think she was spending too much time with her uncle. She noticed, of course, that Brynden had said nothing about Jon. She felt a pang of guilt for it, but it couldn’t be helped. Not until it was time for the truth to come out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Mercury by Sleeping at Last


	11. Jon II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon and Robb get drunk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's a bit short, but I've got a busy weekend coming up, and I had very little time to myself today, so I wanted to get this posted while I can! 
> 
> I'm a bit behind on replying to comments, but I'll get to them tomorrow evening! Thank you to everyone reading this! You make me feel better about taking on this massive amount of work lmao

It was entirely possible that Jon was drunk.

He hadn’t meant for it to happen. He’d meant to keep a clear head so that he could process the news calmly, like a rational man would. Then again, perhaps that was exactly what he was doing. Most of the men he had known in his life would have reacted to this kind of news by drinking heavily and then maybe getting into a fight.

Jon didn’t feel like fighting. Jon felt like drinking and perhaps crying, but he wouldn’t ever admit that to Robb, especially since Robb just looked so _guilty_.

The only man Jon could think of who wouldn’t have reacted to this news with drunken fighting—aside from Sam and, well, actually now he could think of a great number of men, like Lord Commander Mormont and Aemon Targaryen and. Gods. Jon was going to be sick—but the point was that there was always one man that Jon could count on as a moral compass, and now _that_ wasn’t even true.

“That might be the worst part,” he said, even though he wasn’t sure that was right. The worst part was the potential for madness running through his veins, probably. But the other thing was also pretty bad. “He lied. He lied for years. Every time I made a decision, however difficult it was, I always tried to pick something that would make him proud. But I didn’t know him at all. None of us did.”

“We knew him,” Robb said. He sighed when he said it. Just so _weary_. Robb was drunk too, sprawled out on the couch across the room. Jon was propped up at the desk, feeling slightly jealous of the couch. He kind of wanted the couch. Why did Robb always get _everything_ , just because _Robb_ wasn’t a bastard?

_I’d at least like a seat by the fire_ , Jon thought, so he went and laid on the rug on his back, staring up at the ceiling. He probably wouldn’t do this if he wasn’t drunk, and the thought was a bit thrilling. _Why not get drunk? You just found out you’re half fucking dragon. Drink away, my boy._

“ _Did_ we know him?” he wondered. “He lied to your mother. He let her believe that he dishonored her. He let us _all_ believe it.”

“I don’t pretend to understand why he didn’t ever tell her,” Robb admitted. “He should have _trusted_ her. She could have been…well.” _A mother to you_ , Jon finished inwardly, miserably. He knew that was what Robb had been about to say. “But he didn’t lie for no reason. He lied to _protect_ you. Because he made a promise to his sister to protect you, and so he kept it. That was the kind of man he was.”

“He lied,” Jon insisted.

“For good reason,” Robb fired back. “It’s about doing what’s right, not about just…not lying _ever_ , for any reason. Sometimes you have to do a bad thing for the greater good. That’s how it _works._ It doesn’t mean you’re bad for it. Not if you’re doing it for the right reasons! Circumstances are…different sometimes. For different people. It isn’t just all the same all the time.” At least Jon was pretty sure Robb had said _circumstances_. It was a bit slurred and backward. “What would you have done, then? If it was Sansa?”

Well. That was an easy answer. Embarrassingly easy, actually. Jon just nodded. Yes, if it was Sansa, he would do anything. He had proven that already, hadn’t he? And if it was Arya, he’d do the same. He’d keep that promise.

“I suppose,” he admitted. “He still should have told me.”

“I’m sure he meant to,” Robb said. It sounded false, like Robb just felt like he had to say _something_.

Not that Jon blamed him. Jon wouldn’t have known how to deliver that news any better than Robb had. Jon would have probably done a worse job, come to think of it. Robb was always better at everything.

“All my life, I only wanted to make him proud,” he admitted. He sounded more sober than he was. He wanted more to drink, but he didn’t want to get up, and he knew he should stop anyway. Sansa had told them not to do anything rash, and he so hated disappointing Sansa. “On the wall, I always asked myself if my father would have been proud of me. And he wasn’t my father at all.”

“Of course he was your fucking father,” Robb snapped. Jon looked at him. Robb’s expression was hard to read, especially because it swam and danced, but also because it was thunderous and serious and so unlike the Robb that Jon remembered.

_I don’t know him_ , Jon thought. _Not the way I used to._

“My father was a…” he started, but Robb shook his head.

“Your father was the man who raised you. It doesn’t matter whose blood is in you. You’re more Stark than any of us. You protected Sansa when I didn’t. You took back Winterfell when I couldn’t. You are a Stark, Jon. You got a direwolf pup, didn’t you? And you actually kept yours alive! Sansa and I couldn’t manage _that_! If you don’t want anyone but us three to know about what I told you, we can keep that secret. We _can_. It’s not anything to do with anyone but us. Do you understand?”

Jon nodded at last, mostly because Robb expected it. Really, he wondered. Wondered about blood and fathers and mothers and what madness might mark him as his father’s son. He wondered about Sansa. His sister. His cousin.

There had been so many days he thought he came back wrong, but what if it wasn’t the red woman’s magic at all? What if it was just _him_? Targaryen madness. The gods flipping a coin. What would _she_ think? Would she be as ready to call him brother as Robb? She was different now from how she had been as a child, but she still cared about those things. She cared about legitimacy and appeasing the people who questioned his claim because of his status. She cared about politics, and he understood why. He knew what she had gone through and what she'd had to do to adapt and survive. Things like politics and alliances and birth order were meaningless on the Wall, but that didn’t mean they were meaningless everywhere. Sansa would cling to whatever power she had because she knew what it was like to be powerless, and she knew how unsafe it made you when you were.

It wasn’t like he had _lied_ to her. It wasn’t like he had given her any reason to distrust him. But what would she think? Would she worry about him now that she knew? Perhaps it was easy to trust a brother, whether that brother was half or whole. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so easy now. A cousin instead of a brother. Jon instead of Robb.

“Things won’t be the same,” he said miserably. Robb sighed.

“Of course they will,” he said. “Nothing has to change.”

But it did. Why couldn’t Robb see that? Of course it had to change. He was _different_. He was wrong somehow. Back to life when he should be dead, and now he wasn’t their brother at all. He needed to go. He needed to leave. It would be better for everyone.

“Sansa would kill you if you left,” Robb said, and Jon realized he was drunker than he thought, if he could speak aloud without meaning to.

“Maybe it would be for the best,” he said weakly.

“Sansa killing you?”

“No. I don’t know. Leaving. Less to deal with.”

“You’re not leaving,” Robb said. It was a man’s voice he spoke with. A lord’s voice. “The Starks belong in Winterfell, and you are still a Stark. There will be no more talk of leaving.”

Jon lapsed into a sulky silence, and he stared into the flames. _Fire and Blood. Gods. What a terrifying house motto, for fuck’s sake_. He wished Maester Aemon was still at the wall. He would leave now. Ride to him. Tell the old man that there was a Targaryen left to him. But there were no more dragons at the wall. Just him. And he had already died once.

Sansa left so quickly after the revelation. He wondered what she was planning. If she was plotting something. He trusted her. He did. But every time he saw Littlefinger whispering in her ear…

It twisted his gut to think she could ever betray her family. But he knew that power could be a poison, and that even the best people could be lured by it. He didn’t think he would blame Sansa if she conspired against him somehow. He would be hurt. Perhaps he would be heartbroken. But he wouldn’t blame her. She needed to keep herself safe, and he wasn’t sure that his presence did that anymore.

_No one can protect anyone_ , she had said. Defeated and lost, the night before the battle. And she had resisted his every attempt to keep her safe since. Maybe she was right.

He dozed for a while. He wasn’t sure how long. When he woke, it was to the clink of armor and Sansa’s heavy sigh. He turned to find her voice, and he saw Brienne helping Robb to his feet. Sansa was looming over him with her arms folded across her chest, but then she crouched down beside him. There was a fondness to her irritation that made him smile involuntarily, though he knew he should be embarrassed.

“Can you get up, Jon?” she asked. He did, lurching to his feet. Brienne sent him an impatient look over her shoulder. “I’ve got him, Brienne,” Sansa said. Oh, and now he _was_ embarrassed. Amused tolerance for her brother—her _cousin_ —because he’d gone and made an ass of himself.

“I’m sorry, Sansa,” he said, but she only laughed at him and took his arm to steady him.

“My two foolish brothers,” she said. She sounded so warm, and it went straight to his head, faster than the wine had. He smiled at her again.

He followed her up to their quarters. He was annoyed to see that Sansa had given up the lord’s chambers for Robb. Jon had been so glad to win that battle with her, convince her to take something good for herself. But he couldn’t even claim _that_ victory now. Brienne steered Robb through the door of the room that used to be Sansa’s, and Sansa led Jon down towards his. There was a girl lighting a fire when they entered, but she didn’t look at them. Just scurried out as quickly as she could manage. Sansa turned back his covers, and Jon felt himself flushing.

“I’m an idiot,” he said, all apology again, and again Sansa smiled at him. _How? Why?_ He wanted to ask but didn’t dare, afraid that his reminder would remind her that he wasn’t her brother anymore. Actually, if he wasn’t her brother, should she even be in the room with him? Alone with him? He wasn’t sure how that worked, but cousins could marry cousins, so it probably wasn’t very proper to be in a room like this together, no matter how long they spent as siblings first. He should ask her, but then she might leave.

She was leaving anyway. She passed close to him, and she gripped his arm in her hand.

“Sleep, Jon,” she said. “I promise you that in the morning, we’ll figure out what to do.”

Jon nodded. His head felt too heavy.

“Whatever you want,” he said. “I’ll do whatever you want. I promise. Even if I’m not your favorite brother anymore. Or your brother at all. _Gods_. I’ll do anything, Sansa.”

Her expression clouded with something, and she brushed his hair out of his eyes.

“Sleep,” she said. Her voice shook a little. She looked startled by what he had said, and he wished he could remember exactly what it was. “Will you sleep for me?”

“Yes,” he said. _Anything._ He had promised her, and he would keep his promise. _Just like father._ He turned at last toward the bed. By the time he reached it and thought to take off his doublet, he heard the door close behind her, and she was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song for this chapter is Floating by Yoe Mase


	12. Brienne II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa receives a raven with a Lannister seal, and Brienne finally tells her story

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you as always to everyone who's reading this! You're really keeping me going lmao.

It wasn’t very long after the feast to celebrate Robb's return that Sansa asked to speak with Brienne privately. She was smiling when she made the request, so Brienne wasn’t particularly worried, but there was something about her lady's manner that made her wary all the same. The Blackfish had departed for the Vale several days earlier, and Sansa had so far made no further moves against Lord Baelish. Brienne had neither the mind nor the patience for the kinds of political games that Sansa had to play with him, and she hoped that she wasn’t going to be called on to help.

When she entered Sansa’s office and closed the door behind her, leaving Pod in the hall to keep watch, her eyes were drawn immediately to the scroll Sansa was holding. It had already been opened, but even broken, the seal was unmistakably Lannister.

“My lady?” she asked. She tried to discern what Sansa was feeling. A letter from Cersei…

But Sansa looked amused, rather than frightened or angry. Confused, certainly, but not stiff with poorly concealed terror the way she had been after Jon had received that letter from Ramsay Bolton when they were at the Wall.

Then again, Sansa had buried her fear deeply during that ordeal. It had only been later that she started to shake, when it was only Brienne to see.

Brienne was always uncertain where she stood with Sansa. She knew that Sansa didn’t quite know how to speak to a woman sworn into her service, which meant they were both awkward and stilted about it, since Brienne didn’t know how to talk to a lady she was sworn to, either. With Lady Catelyn, it had been different. Lady Catelyn was older, and motherly, and kind but in a distant way. Sansa felt more like a younger sister than a mother. She was capable and independent, but she was stronger with Brienne beside her, and it made Brienne feel more than just _physically_ protective. Sansa was uncertain, too. Hesitant to make a wrong move and plunge her family back into the chaos after they had only just gotten themselves out. She asked for Brienne’s thoughts in a way Lady Catelyn never had. Brienne's fierce desire to protect Sansa had become about more than just her sworn vows. She wanted to see her lady safe and happy and content, and she had no idea how to express any of those things. It was like some new language, the mechanics of which she hadn’t yet mastered.

“I’ve received a curious letter,” Sansa said. Her voice, like her expression, held some mirth. Whatever was in the scroll, it wasn’t a threat. Or perhaps it was merely an ineffectual one. Brienne allowed herself to relax into her seat as she waited. Sansa arched one eyebrow and continued, “from Jaime Lannister.”

“Oh,” Brienne said, before she could tell herself to be quiet. Sansa's good humor was definitely more potent now, peeking through her usual stoic mask. Brienne didn’t quite like being at the center of it, but she could at least appreciate that Sansa was feeling it.

“You can imagine my surprise,” Sansa continued. “When instead of more empty threats from his sister, I found a rather earnest inquiry about your health.”

“I,” Brienne started. She swallowed back panicked defensiveness. _There’s nothing dishonorable in our friendship_ , she told herself. _A few foolish dreams and girlish fantasies mean nothing_. _He has been nothing but honorable towards me._ She remembered the way he had spoken to her in the beginning, when she’d led him in chains and he was constantly goading her to fuck him in them. _He has been nothing but honorable towards me_ recently _, at least._ “We saw Ser Jaime at Riverrun. He’s the one who let Podrick and I past the siege lines, my lady. We ran into him again as I was escaping with your brother and uncle. He let us go.”

“According to Uncle Brynden, you didn’t give him much choice,” Sansa said. She sounded approving, but curious, still, like Brienne’s relationship to Jaime was a puzzle she was trying to untangle for herself. Brienne didn’t want to upset Sansa. She wanted to _protect_ her. Still, surely Sansa must understand how complicated these things could be. She wasn’t a child anymore, when things were so simple and people were only as good as the houses they belonged to.

“I would have fought Ser Jaime to protect Robb,” she admitted quietly. “He knew that, and said he was glad of it. But he didn’t force the issue. There is a…regard between us.” Seeing Sansa’s furrowed brow, she hastened to correct with, “a trust.”

“He’s a Lannister,” Sansa said.

“Yes, I know,” Brienne replied. Sansa seemed surprised by her tone. Perhaps it was more defensive than Brienne meant it to sound. She sighed. “He isn’t the man everyone thinks he is.”

“He attacked my father in the street,” Sansa said.

“When our captors tried to rape me, Jaime stopped them, and he lost his hand for it,” Brienne retorted. She knew her face was red from the embarrassment of arguing with her lady, but she needed to explain. Sansa must not think her foolish enough to be swayed by a pretty face attached to a poisonous mind. She knew well what Sansa thought of her own past mistakes in that regard, and she would not have Sansa think her naïve enough to make the same ones at her age. Sansa didn’t say anything. Just watched Brienne carefully, and Brienne took it as permission to continue. “Your mother charged me with his safe passage back to Kings Landing. I hated him. The _Kingslayer_. But your mother charged me, and so I would keep him safe. We walked for weeks, he in chains and me in my armor. Every time we slept I feared he would break free and kill me, but he was weak after a year in your brother’s camp. He finally took my swords as we crossed a bridge, but I had another, and we fought.”

“You _fought_ Jaime Lannister? When he had both his hands?” Sansa asked, awed and nearly smiling.

“As I said, he was weak from captivity, but…yes. And he never wanted to admit it, but I was winning, too.” Seeing Sansa smile wider, more admiring, Brienne found the strength to continue. “We were captured by the Bloody Mummers before we could finish the fight. They tied us together on a single horse. Ser Jaime told me that they would rape me, and that I should close my eyes and think of better things. He said fighting would only get me killed.” Sansa wasn’t smiling anymore, and Brienne expected her to be as angry with the suggestion as she herself had been, but Sansa only nodded, gesturing for her to continue. “When the men came for me that night, I fought them. It wasn’t enough. Ser Jaime lied to them. He said that my father was wealthy, that Tarth is called the Sapphire Isle because of its mines.”

“For its waters,” Sansa guessed, or maybe it was something she had learned once. Brienne nodded.

“The blue of its waters,” she confirmed. “He convinced them that my father would pay my weight in sapphires, but only if I was returned unharmed. The man in charge of us, Locke, he accepted, and he stopped his men. They tied me back up. Ser Jaime was quite pleased with himself. Locke didn’t like that. He took Jaime over to the fire. I couldn’t see, but I could hear Jaime screaming. I fought against my bonds, but I couldn’t free myself. I thought he had been killed, and that I had failed your mother, but they only took his sword hand.”

“As a message?” Sansa asked.

“I still don’t know,” Brienne admitted. “I think Locke just wanted to hear him scream.”

Sansa's expression ticked slightly.

“Yes,” she said. “Some men like that.” When Brienne hesitated, uncertain what to say, she nodded. “Go on,” she prompted. Brienne wished again that she was better suited for comfort, but she wasn’t. She kept talking, instead.

“They tied the hand around his neck. As the days passed…forgive me, Lady Sansa. You don’t need to hear this.”

“I do,” Sansa argued softly. “To understand, I need to know.”

Brienne hesitated, but Sansa didn’t waver. She was a proper lady, and Brienne wanted to protect her, but she had seen many horrible things within these walls as Ramsay Bolton’s unwilling bride, and she could choose for herself what she was willing to hear. Brienne forced herself to continue.

“His hand rotted. His wrist quickly became infected. They never checked on him or changed the bandages. They gave me the responsibility of caring for him. Cleaning him and feeding him as he grew weaker. They taunted him, and they beat us both frequently, but they never raped me. Ser Jaime’s lie worked. He grew so ill I feared he’d die before we could get to Kings Landing. I still thought there was a chance that his family would agree to the exchange. Jaime was convinced they wouldn’t honor it, but I suspected that he just wanted me to let him die.”

“My mother should not have sent you alone,” Sansa said.

“She didn’t believe she had a choice,” Brienne replied. “She was willing to pay any price if it meant seeing you and your sister safe.” _And your brother wasn’t_ , she didn’t say. The look that passed between the two women acknowledged the reality anyway.

“How did you escape?” Sansa asked. She was invested, Brienne realized. Warmth spread through her, and she ducked her head to hide an amused smile. Sansa liked stories as much as Brienne always had, it seemed.

“We were delivered to Lord Bolton,” she said. She grimaced. “He played at courtesy. He had a maester look at Jaime’s arm. He gave him medicines for the infection. He gave me _proper_ clothing to wear.” At Sansa’s questioning look, she answered, “a hideous pink dress. Even you would have looked outlandish in it. On me, it was ludicrous.”

Sansa laughed, surprising Brienne into joining her.

“Gods, what a petty, evil man,” Sansa said. “At least he allowed you a change of clothes.”

“Yes, it was very courteous of him,” Brienne replied, just as sarcastic. Sansa laughed again. “He also allowed us a bath.” Impossible, of course, not to remember that. The sight of Jaime moving towards her, out of the steam. She had been mortified, but not so mortified that she didn’t _notice_ him. It still came to her sometimes, unbidden, when she bathed. She continued, shakily. “And dinner. Perhaps so he could watch Ser Jaime struggle to cut his food with one hand.”

“Yes, that sounds like Roose Bolton,” Sansa said darkly.

“He agreed to send Ser Jaime to Kings Landing, but I would stay behind, to await my father’s reply to the ransom they wanted for me. Ser Jaime didn’t want to leave me, but we knew well there was nothing we could do. I asked him to honor his promise to your mother, and then he left. But my father had to refuse my ransom. There was no earthly way he could have paid it. Ser Jaime’s lie had worked too well. When Lord Bolton was gone, they received my father’s counteroffer. It was too low, of course.”

“Brienne,” Sansa breathed, and Brienne shook her head to reassure her. The bear pit had been horrible, but it was nothing like what Sansa seemed to fear had happened.

“They had a pit,” she said. “They would throw prisoners in, make them fight a bear for their freedom. They gave me a wooden sword.”

“Monsters,” Sansa breathed. Her eyes were glimmering.

“I tried to fight it off. I was still in that absurd dress. The men were all singing and laughing. I was so...” She exhaled slowly, heavily, remembering the _rage_ she had felt. Like the sight of Jaime’s nakedness through the steam, it was something that came to her often. The rage and fear and the roiling _hate_ for those men. “I was so angry,” she said. “That that was to be my death. I wanted a good one. An honorable one. But the bear had already got its claws in me, and I knew I could not last long against it. Even with Oathkeeper, it would have been a struggle. With a wooden sword…” She shook her head. “I would have died. But Ser Jaime jumped into the pit. He had turned his escort around on the road, when he learned that my ransom had been refused. He came back for me. He had no weapon. One hand. He was still unwell. And he did it anyway. Locke was too afraid to lose Tywin Lannister's heir, and so he ordered us brought up. They tried to stop me from leaving, even so, but Ser Jaime insisted.” Sansa was silent, expressionless. Brienne wanted to stop, but she also wanted it to be as clear as it could be. “On the way back to the capital, he made the maester tend to my wounds, and he slept with himself between me and the other men. He thought I didn’t notice, but of course I did. He made them give me proper traveling clothes, too. They were ill-fitting, but they were better than the dress. He called me his protector, when he was asked. And he made sure I was afforded every respect when we returned to Kings Landing. Even then, we were conspiring to get you away.”

“Conspiring?” Sansa asked, doubtful.

“Ser Jaime knew my aims, and he promised to help. We discussed it often, in the weeks I was there. But your mother was dead, and Robb as well. We had no idea where Arya was, if she was even still in the city. We weren’t sure what we could do, or where I could take you. Then the king died, and you were gone. Ser Jaime gave me armor, his sword, and Podrick. He gave me gold and a horse and supplies. He sent me to find you, to fulfill the promises that we both swore to your mother.”

She met Sansa’s eyes for the last part, because it was important to her that Sansa understood that, even if she couldn’t understand the rest. _My vows are his, and his are mine._ Sansa breathed out, and she looked back down at the paper in her hands.

“He cares for you,” she finally said. “I suppose that should have been obvious from the tone of this letter, but now I can see it more clearly.”

“Ser Jaime and I went through a lot together,” Brienne agreed quietly. “I know that his family is the enemy of yours, and I am sworn to you. I would stand against him, if it came to it. But he is a good man. He is a man of honor.”

“A man of honor,” Sansa said slowly, disapprovingly. “Would not stand beside Cersei. A man of honor would stop her. Take her from the throne.”

“He did so once,” Brienne reminded her, gently. She wouldn’t spill Ser Jaime’s secrets. They weren’t hers to tell. But everyone knew, at least, that he _did_ kill the Mad King, even if they didn’t understand why.

“Yes, when the king wasn’t his sister,” Sansa said. “Or the woman he loves.”

There was an accusation there that also sounded like a reminder, and Brienne flushed. Yes, she thought. Sansa _did_ know. Just like Cersei. Brienne’s regard for Jaime must have been too obvious. She wished she knew what gave her away. She wished she knew how to control her expression to keep her secrets better hidden.

“Ser Jaime loves his family,” she admitted. She thought again of how he must have fared after the death of his son. He hadn’t cared very much for Joffrey, but Tommen had been young, and so much better natured. She regretted that she hadn’t mentioned his daughter when she saw him last. He’d never had a chance to be a father to his children. It must have hurt him that he had failed to protect all three of them. “Everything he has done, he has done it in service of his family.”

“Which you expect me to understand, of course,” Sansa said dryly. “Perhaps I do. Perhaps I _would_ do anything for my family. But my family is not Cersei. My family does not bring chaos to the realm. We do what we can to help our people, and we are good rulers, even despite our inexperience. My _family_ is fighting for what’s right, and for what’s just. We are taking back our home. We are trying to protect the north from what Jon has seen beyond the Wall. It isn’t the same. To choose to fight for your family is an honorable thing, but not when your family is without honor. And _she_ is the only family he has left. It isn’t honor, Brienne.”

She sounded so apologetic. So sad for Brienne. Brienne had never felt more awkward, or ugly, or unloved.

_Foolish, silly Brienne_ , Sansa’s tone said. _Poor, simple Brienne. She fell in love with a man without honor, and she clings to the scant evidence he has shown her of it, because otherwise she would have to admit that she fell in love with a beautiful man who cared nothing for her._

But no, of course that wasn’t what Sansa was saying. That was only what Brienne was hearing, because Brienne had learned years ago that no words prepared you better for the scorn of the world than the ones you could level at yourself.

And those words were true, anyway. Sansa might have been too kind to think them, but that didn’t mean they weren’t right. Jaime _was_ a man of honor. Brienne had seen it. She _knew_ it. But his choices had not been honorable ones. She had seen the regret in his eyes when last they met, and she knew that he did not want to give Riverrun over to the Freys, no matter what his sister had ordered. But it was one thing to disagree with Cersei’s orders, and it was another thing entirely to defy them, and Jaime loved his sister too much to ever go against her. Jaime loved Cersei, and he followed what Cersei told him to do, and there was no honor in that. Honor in intentions only went so far.

“Yes,” she admitted aloud, quietly. “If he could find the will to do what was right, Ser Jaime would be…he _is_ a good man. I don’t ask you to believe it. I don’t have the proof you would require to believe it. But he _is_ a good man. If not for his sister…” She sighed. She leaned back in her chair. She felt very light, suddenly. “I know it doesn’t matter, my lady. What he wants to do and what he chooses to do are very different. And what I want to believe and what I choose to do about those beliefs are different as well. If I am called upon to stand against him in service to your family, I will. That is all that matters. I would not want you to doubt that.”

“Brienne,” Sansa said softly, and her hand reached out, and it covered Brienne’s own. _Jaime did so once_ , she thought, thinking of the way his fingers had covered hers when she reached for the knife at the table with Roose Bolton. It felt more pathetic than ever in the middle of this conversation. “You have never given me any reason to doubt. I know it isn’t…we don’t always choose the best for ourselves.”

“We don’t choose who we love,” Brienne said, dry, wishing that she didn’t hear the echo of Jaime saying the same words in her head. “But we can choose what we do about it. Ser Jaime has chosen poorly. I won’t make the same mistakes.”

Sansa’s small smile was heartbreaking in its sweetness, and Brienne clung to it. This was a service she could be proud of. This was a life she could be happy with. The blistering want that she felt when she saw Ser Jaime was only that—want. Easily suppressed. Easily turned aside. It would never have led to anything anyway.

She had fulfilled Jaime’s oaths for him, and now she had made certain that Sansa could at least understand that there was honor in him still. That was all she could do for him if he would not choose to help himself.

“If you would like to write back to him, of course you may,” Sansa said. “The letter was more for you, anyway.” Bienne could tell that it made Sansa nervous, to give up control of the correspondence, so she shook her head. She could not think of anything she would say to him, anyway, except perhaps to remind him that he didn’t have to follow his sister, and she didn’t think that was something he particularly wanted to hear.

“No, my lady,” she said. “You should handle writing the reply, if you choose to.”

“Is there anything you would like me to include?”

“Only that I am alive,” Brienne answered. “Since that was the original inquiry.”

Sansa nodded, and she dismissed Brienne.

Brienne tried very hard not to think of Jaime for the rest of the day, but of course she was unsuccessful. He seemed closer now than ever. Farther, too, at the same time. She couldn’t imagine that they would ever again have occasion to meet as friends. She wondered if he had realized the same when he raised his golden hand to wave to her. Even from that distance, his expression had been despondent. It was easy to imagine that that was his way of saying a proper goodbye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song for this chapter is Forever Bound by Von Grey


	13. Sansa III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa writes a letter and has a disturbing realization

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who read the last chapter, and who is still on this train with me! Another short one, but now that the holidays are over, I have a week off, and I'll hopefully be getting a LOT of editing done!

_Lady Brienne yet lives_ , Sansa wrote. _Though she has declined to write on her own behalf, and has left the task to me. You have done a fine job in showing her exactly your worth by continuing to support the madness in Kings Landing. Please refrain from giving my regards to your sister, though I know you are unable to deny her anything, and I expect that request to be disregarded._

She reread the message and, satisfied, sent it off to the rookery. Her conversation with Brienne yesterday had left her feeling somewhat rattled, and so she had delayed writing the response until this morning, when she could have a clearer head.

She had no reason to doubt the truth of her sworn sword’s story, but it was the strained affection and the confused longing in Brienne’s voice that gave Sansa pause. It was difficult to reconcile such a glowing picture of Jaime Lannister with the man that she remembered from when she was a girl. She had seen very little of the Kingslayer when she was in Kings Landing, and she had known even less, except that he was absurdly handsome and very proud. He had frightened her, speaking too sarcastically and looking too sharp. He and Cersei together were a picture of perfection that always made Sansa feel off-balanced and ugly. He had been kind on a few occasions on the road as they traveled from Winterfell. Gallant like a knight _should_ be, but she had annoyed him with her obvious fear of him. She had been so afraid of everyone after Lady had been killed.

_He_ frightened her still, if only because Cersei frightened her.

But the image of the handsome Kingslayer jumping into a bear pit one-handed to protect Brienne was one that had stayed with her all through the night. She knew how easy it was to fall for a man so handsome and brave, but _Joffrey_ had never been brave. She had only wanted him to be, because she wanted her life to be as grand as a song, and in her desperation she had ignored every sign she should have seen that Joffrey was not even the hero of his _own_ story, and certainly was not the hero of _hers_. Brienne was much older than Sansa had been when she had those foolish dreams, and she didn’t seem nearly so foolish as Sansa had been. She reminded Sansa of her mother sometimes. Reasonable and practical and strong, but with a softness that came through in her smile. She would make a good mother. Firm but kind. Stern but loving. Was that the sort of person who would fall for empty charms? Or was she right? Was Jaime Lannister more than what the world had made of him?

Sansa didn’t trust people to make judgements for her anymore. She would have to judge the Kingslayer for herself. Brienne’s words could only go so far, because anyone could see that Brienne wasn’t objective about him, and Sansa knew better than anyone that love made people see things that weren’t there.

She supposed that her letter to Jaime Lannister may have been harsher if she hadn’t spent much of the night wondering what Brienne saw in him, but it was too late to fix it. And perhaps harshness wouldn’t have served, anyway. His letter to her was perfectly cordial, and her own wry response set a friendly enough tone. She wondered if he would bother to respond.

* * *

Later that night, after dealing with the concerns of the smallfolk, the continued production of several new glass gardens, and the question of where to store the surplus food for when winter began in earnest, Sansa was pleased to find herself in the lord’s chambers with Robb and Jon. For the past few days, Sansa had given Jon space to settle with the truth about his parentage. She had promised to be there for him, and she had offered him whatever he might need, but he had been glum and listless even so. Tonight, he seemed a bit lighter, and she was glad to see him smile when she left Brienne at the door and entered the solar. He made room for her on the small couch before the fire between he and Robb, and Sansa settled in with a happy sigh, accepting a goblet of wine from her brother.

“What are we drinking about, then?” she asked, trying to sound spirited rather than concerned.

“Oh, everything,” Robb said. “Jon’s just spent the past hour catching me up on the dire situation beyond the Wall. And here I assumed that the Lannisters were our most pressing enemies.”

“No,” Sansa admitted. “They aren’t. Compared to what Jon has seen, the Lannisters are nothing.”

“Not nothing,” Jon said, rubbing at his face, that tired gesture that he did so often. “But easier to kill, certainly.”

“We’ve also been discussing Bolton loyalists and the possibility of the Free Folk rejecting our laws,” Robb said dryly. “Anything else you can think of that might ruin our happiness here?”

“Littlefinger,” Sansa and Jon said in unison. Jon smiled a bit, looking at her, meeting her eyes. She realized then that he had been avoiding them. She wondered if he remembered what he said to her the other night. She had assumed that he would forget it the next morning, after the drink had worn off, but maybe he remembered and was embarrassed. She wondered, too, how to tell him that she _did_ still love him, and that he would always be the man who fought for her. She _could_ just speak it plainly, but…no. Maybe she couldn’t. It didn’t feel right to say it aloud, although she wasn’t sure why. Maybe she just wasn’t built for those open displays of affection anymore.

“Littlefinger,” Robb said. He rolled his eyes. “ _Is_ he a concern? Or merely an annoyance? He seems harmless enough, if a bit…bow-y and scrape-y. I certainly don’t like the way he looks at _you_ , but can’t we just...ask him to leave?”

“Littlefinger is a concern,” Sansa answered, hiding her amusement at Robb’s dismissiveness. “But he’s good at pretending not to be. That’s how he gets people to trust him long enough so he can put his knife in their back.”

Robb and Jon both winced at that, and Sansa couldn’t help a small laugh, apologetic. She put her hand on Jon’s arm, and she leaned against Robb’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she said, but Robb and Jon were both laughing now, too. Robb covered his face with his hands, and he groaned.

“All right,” he said. “Littlefinger. What does he want? Why is he still here?”

“He wants to marry me,” Sansa said.

The laughter died.

She took another sip of her wine, and she looked between them. Robb looked vaguely as if someone had punched him. She wondered if it was the association with _any_ wedding that made him look so harassed, or if it was just the idea of that particular man wanting to marry _her_. Jon, though. There was no mistaking Jon. He was murderous.

“Absolutely not,” Robb said.

“You asked what he wants, and I’m telling you. He wants to marry me. He’s told me himself. He wanted to marry me and be made king and queen in the north, but they chose Jon before he could get me to agree, and now _you’re_ back. That’s why he’s a concern. He knows what he wants, and _I_ know he’s capable of going to any lengths to get it. He…” She took a sharper, deeper breath than she meant to, and her lungs burned with it. “Aunt Lysa. She saw him kiss me when we were in the Vale. I didn’t want to. I wouldn’t have kissed him. But Aunt Lysa saw, and she didn’t believe me when I told her what happened, and she tried to push me out the moon door. Littlefinger talked her down. He saved me. And then he pushed her.” She looked between Robb and Jon desperately, willing them to understand. “I didn’t want him to do it. But I let him, because I was afraid. And I helped him when the lords of the Vale began to question him, because I didn’t know what else to do. And I married Ramsay Bolton because he convinced me that that was how we were going to get Winterfell back. I knew even then that he wanted me. That Ramsay would only be temporary. I assumed he would find some way to kill Ramsay, too. I would have married him, then, because I didn’t think there was another way. I wanted Winterfell back. I wanted to be at home.”

“Sansa,” Robb said, cutting her off with a gentle, comforting murmur. He put an arm across her shoulders and pulled her close. She could feel he and Jon making eye contact over her head, but she closed her eyes and let herself rest against the solid weight of her brother at her side. Jon’s hand took hers, his fingers squeezing, his wordless support comforting. Sansa breathed. She regained control of herself. She allowed herself this moment, this weak moment, and then it had to be over. She straightened up again, and she continued, more slowly and more composed.

“We need to keep him close, at least for now, because otherwise we won’t ever know what he wants. At least if he thinks that I support him, and that I might marry him if he arranges it right, he’ll tell me some of his plans, and we’ll be able to figure out some idea of the rest. Until we know how to stop him…”

“A good, clean sword cut should do it,” Jon said. “It worked for a craven worm like Janos Slynt. It will work for one like Littlefinger, too.”

Sansa looked at Jon. He wasn’t joking. He wasn’t light with drink like he had been the other night. He was furious. His shoulders were tense with it. His eyes were blazing, reflected by the firelight in a way that reminded Sansa that he _wasn’t_ her brother. He was her cousin. Her Targaryen cousin.

For a moment, she didn’t care if it _was_ the Targaryen madness. She _ached_ to hear that he had been the one to kill that awful, frog-faced Janos Slynt. She had prayed for it, once, that someone would throw him down and cut off his head. And someone _had._

_Good_ , she thought, savagely. _He deserved to die, and so does Littlefinger, and so does Cersei, and Jon will kill all of them if I ask._

She pushed that thought away swiftly, horrified with herself, like she had felt after feeding Ramsay to his dogs. Not regretful, exactly. She could never regret removing such a monster from the world. But terrified of what it meant for her, that she could relish in so much pain. Like she had been touched deep inside herself by any one of the horrible jailers she had known in her life. Learned too much from them. Became too much _like_ them.

No. No, she wasn’t like them. She would not allow herself to go down that dark path. Allowing evil people to continue to do evil because you were too afraid of what stopping them meant for your own heart or honor… _that_ was evil, too. She’d hated those people in Kings Landing who refused to stand up to the king. She’d hated those people who stood by and watched. She had to be one of them for a time, but now she didn’t anymore, and she would not allow evil men like Littlefinger to keep winning. Hesitation and guilt and a need to do things _honorably_ were why people like Littlefinger _kept_ winning. They were weaknesses, and if there was one thing Littlefinger was _very_ good at, it was exploiting those weaknesses.

“Like it or not, we still have need of him,” Sansa admitted. “He’s Lord Protector of the Vale. Not a well-liked one, but connected enough. If we kill him without a trial, the lords of the Vale will be forced to respond, and they make up the bulk of our remaining army.”

“We don’t need any army so badly that you’re going to marry him,” Robb insisted. He hesitated. Unable to tell. “Unless that’s what you want?”

“It isn’t,” Sansa said quickly. She turned and looked at Jon, and she saw that he somehow looked even angrier than he already had. “It isn’t.” She squeezed his fingers again, tighter. “But I can handle him for now. I know how to talk to him. Better me than either of you.”

Jon shook his head.

“If he makes you uncomfortable...”

“I can handle it,” Sansa said. She met his eyes. “Jon. I promise.”

Jon returned the pressure of her fingers at last, and he weakly smiled.

“I never thought I would see this,” Robb said suddenly. He was watching them, Sansa realized, and she took her hand from Jon’s swiftly, as if burned. Robb continued, unnoticing. “The two of you getting along. It’s...more than I ever expected to see.”

Sansa hid her confusion in her goblet as she took another sip. She tipped the conversation in some other direction, and Robb and Jon took it from there. Sansa was warm and safe between them, and she should have been enjoying it, but she couldn’t. The wine made her feel sick the way it used to when she was a girl, this low pain in her stomach.

She had snatched her hand away.

Ridiculous, the things that could make it obvious. She had been so sure that she knew her own heart. She had been so sure that she understood. But she snatched her hand away like she had done something wrong in clinging to Jon, and that made it plain.

There _was_ something wrong inside her. Wrong and touched by Cersei, more than any of the others.

She never would have snatched her hand away from Robb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Bone by Ben Chatwin
> 
> come keep me motivated over at angel-deux-writes on tumblr!


	14. Cersei I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cersei tries to figure out what she wants.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen I KNOW most of you hate Cersei and I'm sorry this chapter is so long compared to the others, but HOPEFULLY I'm bringing Show Cersei a little closer to Book Cersei with every Cersei chapter! She's been one of my favorite characters to write because it's fun to write a character who thinks a thousand incorrect things for every 1 thing she gets right! I love her. 
> 
> Also, I know it's a popular interpretation that Cersei NEVER loved Jaime, and that she's a narcissist with no feelings for anyone else, but I leaned on the "Cersei did love Jaime once but doesn't remember why, now" which comes from my understanding of the books. If your view is different, I understand, but just FYI I am AWARE of that interpretation, it's just not one I'm following here.
> 
> Yikes. Now that I'm done being pre-emptively defensive of my writing choices, I hope you regardless enjoy lmao.

She was queen again, but it was better this time. She ruled alone, without any man claiming her body but the man she would choose. There was no king beside her with a crown on his unworthy head. There was no stinking ogre of a man demanding her kisses and her pretended fidelity while he soiled their bed with whores and her own servants.

She reminded herself, almost every night, that it was better than it used to be. It was what she had always wanted. She was _satisfied._ She had to be satisfied. Otherwise, what had it all been _for?_

It didn’t work.

It wasn’t _enough_. There were still wars to be won. There were still enemies surrounding her. She wasn’t safe yet. _That_ was what she needed. She was sure of it. She hated to acknowledge the truth of Jaime’s constant caution, but sometimes she could admit it. Staring at the ceiling, trying to force herself to sleep. She was surrounded by enemies who were kept at bay only though fear of what she might do if she were provoked. It wouldn’t last forever. She would run out of tricks. They would stop believing her bluffs. And then they would come for her.

When she slept, she dreamed, and when she dreamed, she saw their faces. Her dead children. Her dead father. Her grotesque, mocking little brother. And Jaime. Jaime whole and beautiful and hers. He may as well have been dead now, too, for all he resembled the man she had loved. In her dreams, they were all tinged with green. Roiling green. Smoke and screams and _green_ above all else, calling to her. But not Jaime. Jaime was always _gold._

There was little enough left of her twin when she was awake. His gold now was only in her memory; even his _hair_ had somehow gotten darker, like the sheen of him had been tainted somehow by some lesser color. He looked less like her image in her mirror every day, even with her shorter hair and the lines that were beginning to show on her face, which matched the lines that _he_ had started getting first. There were streaks of silver in his hair where hers remained golden, and there was silver too in the beard that he let grow even though she told him she hated the feel of it against her skin.

Not that _that_ had mattered of late. When they did come together, she was rarely looking for something as sweet as kisses, and she wasn’t sure _he_ was looking for anything. He came to her when she called, like he always had, and he fucked her when she wanted him to, and she was searching for him in those moments but could never manage to find the man she wanted. He had been different before. It was more than just his lost hand, though of course that was part of it. It was something deeper, something more essential at his core that had changed in a way she still couldn’t understand.

She was frightened of this new Jaime. Not in the way she had been frightened of her father and his piercing gazes or the way she had been frightened of Robert and his rages. She was frightened of Jaime’s quiet and the distance in his eyes when they fucked. She was frightened of the way he reacted to her orders with a frown and a furrowed brow, but never argued even when he plainly disagreed.

 _He is resigned to me_ , she thought once, in a moment of clarity, and she forced the thought from her mind and refused to acknowledge it thereafter, though of course it rattled there, and she could not have peace. She had been resigned to Robert, once. She knew what it looked like. The lack of passion in his eyes. The way he looked at her with disgust more than he looked at her with love. _She_ at least had fought back. Argued. _Hated_ Robert so obviously that even the drunken idiot had had to acknowledge it. Jaime didn’t even have the decency to do _that_. He stayed, and he endured, and he stared through her until she wanted to scream at him to do _something_.

She had his loyalty for now, even if she no longer had anything else. She must keep it if her victory was going to remain unspoiled. He had always been her twin, her mirror, the man who could be counted on to do what her woman’s frame could not, and even without his sword hand, he still commanded respect in her army. She _needed_ him. She needed him. She had loved him once, and she was sure that she could love him again, as soon as there were no more enemies, and she could find whatever it was that she hungered for. This thing that had been missing, whatever peace she seemed to be seeking in her dreams.

She just needed to secure his loyalty until then. Make him lose some of that cold distance that had snuck into his expression. They only lay together seldom, and only in the first few weeks after he had returned, before she tired of pretending that it was what she wanted. But she supposed she could insist upon it more often, and she could have another child. That might bring him back. Knowing that she was pregnant…or she could even just _say_ she was. The possibility of being a real father to their next child would catch him. He had always been jealous of Robert, getting to show the children the affection that it wasn’t safe for him to show. He had pretended not to care, but she had seen him when Myrcella and Tommen were young. Playing with them when he thought she wasn’t watching. He looked ridiculous, engaging in children’s games while wearing the Kingsguard armor and white cloak. But even so, they had almost looked like a family. She had called the children away, afraid it would be too obvious, and Jaime had been annoyed with her. She had always liked him best like that; she had hated the softness he sometimes let show. Like something embarrassing he should know to keep hidden but _couldn’t_ sometimes. It was a weakness she couldn’t abide in men.

But if it was something he craved, if it was something he _needed_ to keep him loyal, she could give it to him. She could give him more. Marriage. A baby. She was queen of Westeros. When their enemies were gone, who would be left to tell them that the Lannisters weren’t divine, as the Targaryens had claimed when they wed brother to sister for generations?

He would never leave her then. She knew Jaime. She knew him. He was different now, but a man like Jaime couldn’t change who he was. He had never taken a step that wasn’t to secure her happiness or his ability to be beside her. That was all this was, the detachment that she sensed in him. He wanted more proof that she loved him, because Jaime had never been satisfied with what an average man would be happy with. He always wanted more from her.

Well, she would give it to him. Whatever she needed to do to keep him loyal, she would do. A pregnancy could be faked, and if she didn’t fall pregnant in time to make the lie a truth, she had lost children in the womb before. Jaime would have no reason not to believe it. And he would be broken-hearted, and he would worry for her, and he would be insufferable, but it would be better than losing him to the absurd conscience that he insisted on pretending he had.

The Starks were growing in power in the north. First that murderous whore Sansa escaping from Bolton’s clutches and then raising an army with her bastard brother and taking back their home. They grew stronger every day, and now there were rumors that Bolton had allowed _two_ Starks to slip past his grasp: it hardly seemed possible, but Robb Stark had been recrowned King in the North.

Jaime had frowned and said nothing when she raved about it to he and Qyburn, but she knew he had always hated The Red Wedding. That absurd nickname. The stories that followed it. The _brutality_ of it. He hated aligning with the Freys, too, as if he felt he was too good to assist their armies and help them with their Lannister-led aims. Of course the Lannisters _were_ better than the Freys. But a wise man used the allies that were easiest to control, and that was exactly what the Freys were (or _had_ been, before someone apparently killed them, anyway. She was still waiting for more confirmation of that).

That was the problem, wasn’t it? The problem with Jaime. She had been avoiding it as long as possible out of some loyalty or lingering feeling for him, but it could no longer be ignored: Jaime was not their father’s son. He had none of Tywin’s cleverness, and none of his boldness, and none of his vision. No, that had always been _her_ , though their father never wanted to see it. She had always been the one with the ambition, the drive, the understanding of court politics and the willingness to _play_ at court politics. These days she preferred the elegance of a blunt instrument like wildfire and a whole sept full of her enemies, or the efficiency of a monster like Gregor Clegane, but for years she played the game as subtly and as carefully as anyone ever had. Tywin never gave her as much credit for that as he should have, always trying to figure out why Jaime refused to fall in line with whatever he wanted.

 _He’s not the heir you want_ , she wanted to scream at him when he was alive. She wanted to scream it to his corpse, now. She wanted him to live again so she could show him everything she had accomplished. Would he smile at her? Would he be proud of her? Or would he keep trying to prod her idiot twin into having a little ambition and finally giving up those childish fucking dreams of knighthood?

She knew what the answer was. She could have her dreams and her fantasies of her father finally recognizing her worth, but she knew the truth. It would still be Jaime. After all, after everything. Jaime was the firstborn son, and that was what mattered to Tywin. As much of an idiot as he was. As little as he cared about their legacy. _Still_ it would be him.

She had removed Jaime from the field years ago with her cunt and her promises of forever. He followed her blindly into the Kingsguard, cutting away any path to a future lived for Tywin’s goals, and that should have been the end of it. Tywin should have known he had lost. But even after she told him the truth about she and Jaime, even after everything, still Tywin refused to accept that Jaime was not the heir he wanted.

Cersei finished the wine in her glass. She paced across the room, and then back. She needed a clear head, so she wouldn’t drink any more, though she found she craved it more than she used to. The past years had not been kind.

 _I’m glad Tyrion killed him_ , she allowed herself to think. A vicious smile cut across her face. She watched it in the mirror across the room. Her reflection still troubled her most days, with her long hair gone and her short hair still not familiar enough to avoid the shock every time she looked and saw herself. But the smile looked good on her. The mirth in it. The genuine amusement. _Yes, I’m glad his last moments were_ knowing _that Tyrion was the one who killed him_.

It was funny, actually, the more she thought about it. She had been sure at the time that she was devastated by her father's murder, but _why_? She wasn’t some child who still _needed_ him. Sansa Stark had screamed and sobbed when they took her father’s head, but what had Cersei done? Would she have begged for his life if Tyrion had demanded it? No. She didn’t think so. She couldn’t imagine standing in front of Tyrion and begging for _anything_ anymore, let alone the life of her father. Tywin would never have done the same for her. He wasn’t that sort of father.

 _Yes_ , she thought suddenly, feeling more settled. A child would make Jaime stay. A child. A marriage. Fatherhood and the chance to be a husband to her. He didn’t want much. Tywin’s beloved heir was a simple man, after all. What was it that he said when he pushed that Stark boy from the tower? She still regretted the emptiness in Catelyn Stark’s eyes when they spoke over poor Brandon’s bed. She wished that Jaime hadn’t done the foolish thing, even if it was also the only way to make sure the boy didn’t talk. She wished at least that Jaime had killed him.

 _The things I do for love_. That was it. And that was him, Jaime. He would do any horrible thing as long as it pleased her. He longed for her and wanted her and loved her. He would kill any man who stood in her way. Any woman. Any _child._ She wanted power, and he would wrest it from anyone else in order to see her satisfied. That was the man she had loved once, and the man she was sure she could remember how to love again, once the wars were done. Once she had what she needed, and everything started to make sense again. They could start anew. She would love him. She would.

Or, if she couldn’t. If she didn’t. At least she would have him. Wholly, the way she used to, before he lost his hand and his courage with it. That fierceness that she used to crave. He would protect her with that same spirit that he used to have when he thought a child was on the way, whether or not a child actually was. Yes, a child was the way to do it.

* * *

It would be easier if he didn’t continue to act so strange and removed from her. This detachment she couldn’t stop him from showing. It had happened sometimes, before, but it had never been so difficult to pull him back. She had learned early exactly how to get him ready for her. It was a talent that they both excelled at. Stoking the fires of each other’s anger and finally coming together in a passionate display. It was always best like that, when they were too angry and too desperate to do much more than bar the door and tear each other’s clothes off. That was how she liked him best. She knew it must have been how he liked her best, too.

Not anymore. Jaime was slow to rise to anger, and when he did, it often looked too much like disgust. When she wanted him, he was ready for her, as he always had been, but there was a removal there, a self-hatred that only made her angrier.

The more time passed, the less she liked the idea of a child. He would never leave her alone if he thought she was with child. He would grow even more carefully detached. More worried about her. More delicate. No less self-hating.

She didn’t know how to fix the Jaime problem, but luckily there were many more that she _could_ solve. The Starks would keep, up in their frozen northern fortress, especially with winter well on its way. Qyburn’s spies said that they hadn’t called any armies or raised any banners, so perhaps they had learned a thing or two and had decided not to attack her. She could deal with them after the other armies had been taken care of.

“Highgarden,” she told Jaime. She was standing on the map floor as she said it, and Jaime stood outside it, between two pillars, looking down at her feet and the country she strode across with a look of distaste for which she could have slapped him.

“Olenna Tyrell has hardly any force left to her,” Jaime said.

“She has Dorne,” Cersei said. A fact that seemed impossible, given the long-standing enmity between Highgarden and the Dornish, but if there was anyone who could soothe centuries of discord for the sake of revenge, it was Olenna.

“Does she?” Jaime asked. Cersei could not tell what that meant, if it was doubt or a genuine question. Her blood rose the way it always did when he was deliberately obtuse with her.

“We need Highgarden. Without their food, the people will starve, and they will revolt. I know _you_ weren’t here last time it happened, but I would not like to see another bread riot. The Reach is our best option. If Highgarden is so undefended, surely you’ll be able to take it. Even a one-handed _former_ Kingsguard can manage _that_.

“Highgarden,” Jaime agreed finally. He set his mouth in a grim look of disdain. “To which grasping acolyte will you be rewarding the Tyrell seat, then? The Mountain, perhaps? Or Qyburn? He could have a whole castle in which to be unsettling. Away from here.”

Cersei smiled. At least he was still there sometimes, even if she couldn’t reach him. Jaime, her Jaime, sharp and murderous and _hating_. Her twin. Her mirror.

“Highgarden will belong to the crown until we can find a suitable lord to fill its seat,” she answered. “Perhaps _your_ little pet, if it learns to serve its rightful master.” Jaime’s eyes flickered to hers, and she saw something change within them. _Terror_ , she thought. Why was he afraid? She faltered, but did not stop speaking. “Though perhaps not. Last I checked, your mercenary requires gold to be your friend, and we need all the gold we can get to fund these ridiculous wars.” She watched his expression fade back to neutrality. _What are you hiding, brother?_

“Bronn in Highgarden,” Jaime said. He still seemed a bit shaken. She would need to watch him more carefully. He was keeping secrets from her now. “Father will crawl from his crypt to take the throne back.”

“He can try,” Cersei said. “But no man will be able to pry me from this seat.” She smiled at his sharp look. _Yes, brother,_ she thought. _That was a warning._

Jaime understood, for once. He stared at her. She wondered if he was thinking the same thing she was. Wondering what had happened. Wondering how to get back to each other.

Whatever answer there was, he didn’t find it. He bowed, minutely. Too minutely, maybe, if he wanted to afford her proper respect, but Jaime had always been about his little rebellions with Robert, and she wouldn’t take them from him now.

“Your grace,” he said, bitter and wry, before he took his leave. He would need a week at least to prepare the excursion. Maybe he would come to her tonight. He looked utterly disgusted, utterly furious with her. That was always when he wanted her most. It had been long enough that she might even let him have her.

When he was gone, she would have to evaluate. If Jaime could no longer be counted on, she would need to find someone else. She was loath to do it, but alliances could be made with a few whispered promises. She need never act on them. Qyburn, she knew, had been wanting her to branch out. Likely he wanted to do it to reduce some of Jaime’s power, but she would let him believe it was working if it would make him happy. She owed him so much, after all.

She turned and looked at The Mountain. Standing there, silent behind her, as he always was. There were few people in the kingdom who would be able to say that they breathed more easily with a creature like Gregor Clegane at their back, but there weren’t many in the kingdom like her in general. She was powerful with The Mountain behind her. No man could stand against her and live, as long as he was hers. She had felt that way about Jaime once, but then Jaime had lost his hand, and he couldn’t protect her anymore.

She turned to watch her brother’s retreat. The defeated slump to his shoulders. The grim, plodding quality of his walk. Her teeth were grinding together again. Something would have to be done about Jaime once he was back with the food from Highgarden.

Or perhaps, with him gone, she would remember why it was that she had been so convinced they were meant to be together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song(s) for this chapter are Stubborn Love by The Lumineers and Toxic by 2WEI


	15. Jon III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robb receives an invitation from Tyrion Lannister, and the remaining Starks discuss what to do with the truth about Jon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm off for about a week, and I've got some holiday plans upcoming but LOADS of time today, so I figured I'd drop this now! This chapter's fairly short, but hey! Plot! I want to get as much posting and writing done this week as possible, to try and speed things up a bit! Thank you to everyone who read yesterday and was kind about it lmao. I expected a lot more shit than I got, so that's great!

Robb didn’t waste any time when he received the missive from the dragon queen; he came to the table for breakfast one morning, still rumpled with sleep, clutching the scroll in his hand. He was trailed by Davos, who had remained on as Hand despite the change of kings. It still plainly made him uncomfortable to hold such a position, especially now that he barely knew the king in question, but he had been a good choice, and Jon was glad he was staying. He and Sansa and Davos had all done as much as they could to make the transition easier for Robb, and there had been no major disasters yet.

Jon had started to feel like things were settling. That was probably his first mistake: optimism.

They still hadn’t made any decisions regarding how to reveal the fact that he was Lyanna’s son. Sansa had been stalling Littlefinger as they waited for word on the Blackfish’s progress in the Vale, and Jon thought she might have just been stalling _generally_ ; as much as she wanted to pretend that it wasn’t, the subject of his parentage was a complication that the Starks didn’t need. Robb was king again, and so far he had been performing his duties admirably, but Northmen had long memories, and they had not forgotten Robb’s failures. Jon’s truth on its own might not present much of a problem, but it wasn’t the only thing that they were dealing with.

Jon still thought that he should leave before the problem truly became one, but no one seemed to want to hear that. Robb glared and Sansa scoffed, and together they treated his occasional threats of running away with no more credence than they would have given a child. It made him prickly, but it made him warm, too. They had all become so unused to expressing themselves. Maybe that was why refusing to let him leave, even if they did it in fairly curt ways, felt like an expression of affection.

If he _really_ meant to do it, he would just go in the night. Take Tormund and a few others and head back up to the Wall, or go south to some warmer place, like he had planned before Sansa arrived at the Wall and talked him into taking back Winterfell. Perhaps he could try and find Arya. But instead he continued to float the idea, only to sheepishly retract it whenever Sansa got upset with him for it.

He didn’t truly want to go. That felt like a secret for some reason, though it wasn’t one. He wasn’t used to expressing things he _wanted_ anymore. It seemed like the smartest thing to do, the _right_ thing to do, and that meant that he should do it. But he didn’t want to.

Robb’s grim expression when he arrived at the breakfast table was enough to put off any further thoughts of leaving. Robb had been so oddly passive since his return. He examined everything, listened to his advisors, delivered orders, all of it in a voice that didn’t shake but didn’t have any real _strength_ , either. It was almost a relief to see the fire back in his eyes.

“We’ve received a raven,” he said, holding up the scroll. “From Tyrion Lannister.”

Sansa frowned, which wasn’t the only sign that she was upset by the news; her hand curved around the knife beside her plate, as if she meant to stab through the paper if Robb tried to hand it to her.

“What about?” she asked coolly.

_He can_ try _and take her back_ , Jon thought. He had liked Tyrion once, but if he thought he could assert some claim on Sansa…

“Tyrion is apparently serving as Hand to the daughter of Aerys Targaryen,” Robb replied. “Who has decided to come out of exile and name herself queen. She’s already landed at Dragonstone with an army. And three dragons.

“Dragons,” Sansa muttered, in the same tone one might bemoan of rats. She used the knife in her hand to butter a roll. It didn’t shake, but she seemed to release it with some effort afterward.

“They write to ask for your allegiance,” Davos said politely, because Robb was glaring down at the letter again.

“To bend the knee to the rightful ruler of the seven kingdoms,” Robb elaborated.

“Cersei Lannister is the rightful ruler of the seven kingdoms,” Sansa said idly. Her fingers danced nervously along the surface of the roll as she began to pick it apart. Jon pretended he wasn’t watching, and he pretended he wasn’t worried. “Much as I loathe her. This dragon queen can win her crown back, but it’s so like Tyrion to smother something like a conquering in pretty technicalities.”

Jon couldn’t help but grin, and she made an affronted face, like she thought he was laughing at her.

“No, you’re right,” he said quickly. “The Targaryens lost the throne, and the Baratheons took it. She must _take_ it if she wants it back. But I imagine she grew up hearing differently.”

“It helps to fight for something when you treat it as a birthright,” Sansa admitted, indicating Winterfell around them with her free hand. She took a delicate, thoughtful nibble of her bread. “The dragons, though…that doesn’t exactly speak of peaceful intent. Her invitation is probably more of a threat.”

“Of course it’s a threat,” Robb said. He finally sat down at the table. “She intends to get me to Dragonstone where I can’t refuse her, and force me to bend the knee.”

“So you don’t go,” Sansa said. Robb was already shaking his head.

“The next invitation won’t be so politely worded. If I go now, at least we’ll have responded early, so she’ll think we're willing to indulge her. And I won’t bend the knee.”

Sansa frowned again, and she glanced at Jon, who briefly quirked his eyebrows in agreement.

“She’ll kill you,” Sansa said.

“She wants allies, not enemies,” Robb pointed out.

“If you don’t bend the knee…”

“Not every queen is Cersei,” Robb reminded her gently. “And not every king is Joffrey. She’s a girl our own age who is far from any home she’s ever known, advised by a man like Tyrion Lannister. I need to meet her and speak with her. I need her to understand that I won’t bend, but that doesn’t mean we can’t give her aid in taking Kings Landing. And there are important things we need aid with, as well.”

“Dragons might help against the dead,” Jon admitted reluctantly. He wondered what she was like. She would be his aunt, he supposed. Odd to have an aunt of an age with you, but it probably wasn’t so uncommon. He tried to imagine what she would look like. She was his _family._ He found that he couldn’t picture her. Robb, when he had been trying to console Jon, had said that Ned was still his father because Ned was the one who had raised him, and that was true. It sent a shiver of excitement through him to know that he might have been her nephew, if things had gone differently. But that was all. This queen from across the sea was his family, but she was less his family than his cousins were, and that wouldn’t change.

“Davos and I have already been discussing it,” Robb said. “And we think the only choice is to send me.”

“You’re the king,” Sansa reminded him.

“Yes,” Robb said.

“And you don’t think that going yourself is…a bit bold?” she asked.

“Idiotic, you mean,” Robb said, fondly, his good humor shining through in his expression.

“ _You_ said it,” Sansa pointed out. She was smiling too, but she wasn’t even trying to hide her worry.

“I would send Jon as a representative, but we don’t know how she’s going to react to a nephew. The mad king was paranoid, and until we know that his daughter isn’t the same, it stands to reason that we keep Jon away. Plus, if we sent Jon and word got out that we sent a secret Targaryen to treat with another Targaryen...”

“They would assume the worst,” Davos finished apologetically. Jon nodded, because he understood, though he wished it didn’t sting quite so much.

“And I’m not sending _you_ ,” Robb continued, looking at Sansa sharply, like he knew she was going to offer next. “Not when Tyrion Lannister is there. Not when he might try and press a claim for your hand.”

“What about the two of us?” Sansa asked, gesturing to Jon.

“If you arrive at Dragonstone, and Tyrion tries to claim that your marriage remains valid, what do you think Jon will do?” Robb asked. And, well, it was a good point, even if Jon was embarrassed to have been seen so clearly.

“I _am_ capable of diplomacy,” he argued quietly, which made both his cousins laugh, just a bit.

“I know,” Robb said. “But the point remains. We need Sansa here, safe. It makes the most sense for me to go, and for Sansa to stay behind and rule. There should be a Stark in Winterfell, and it should be you, and Jon, to keep the peace.”

Sansa met Jon’s eyes, as if to check if he had heard the hesitation before Robb said “and Jon”. Of course Jon had heard it. He knew exactly what Robb was going to say next.

“You think we should tell everyone the truth before you leave,” he guessed, and Robb ducked his head to control his expression before he finally looked up, met Jon’s eyes, and nodded.

“I think we should announce to the lords that we have just received confirmation of your identity, yes,” he said.

“Littlefinger knows there’s something going on,” Sansa admitted. “He won’t be put off the scent for much longer. And if he does find out, and if he manages to frame it so that it looks like it was a secret that we have been keeping…”

Easy to imagine, yes. Jon had gotten used to Sansa’s grim predictions of what Littlefinger could and would do, and he knew that it was probably possible. He didn’t know how Littlefinger would find out, but whatever terrible things there were to say about Littlefinger, there was also the begrudging admittance that the man had a way of learning the exact things that his enemies were trying to keep from him.

“We should get ahead of it,” Robb said reluctantly. They both looked at Jon, then, and he realized that they were waiting for his opinion. He didn’t quite see why it mattered. That emptiness still yawned inside him. He was still terrified. But they were right; it was the smartest play. He couldn’t figure out why his feelings should be a factor at all.

“Whatever we have to do,” he said. He could feel his brow furrowing with his frown.

“If you aren’t ready,” Sansa started.

“Or if you want to keep it secret,” Robb agreed, slightly more reluctant.

“Whatever we have to do,” Jon insisted gently. His siblings—his cousins—exchanged a single glance, and then Robb nodded.

“We’ll tell them before I leave,” Robb said. “As part of the explanation for why it has to be me.”

“What if they want him gone?” Sansa asked.

“Then I leave,” Jon pointed out.

“Not while Littlefinger is still around,” Robb said. Which, well, was _also_ a fair point. Sansa was frowning deeply between both of them.

“Do you _want_ to leave, Jon?” she asked. He thought she was just being snide at first, but then he saw that she was asking him a real question.

Did he want to leave? No. The answer was immediate. No, of course he didn’t want to leave. It was his home. His family. Robb and Sansa. Even Davos, Brienne, Podrick. His Free Folk friends. Sometimes he craved the simplicity of the land beyond the Wall, but not so he’d ever give this up.

“No,” he answered. “But if it’s for the best…”

“It isn’t,” Sansa said. “Do you want to stay here? With us? In Winterfell?”

_More than anything_ , he realized.

“Yes,” he said.

“Good,” she replied. She squared her shoulders in the way she always did when she was ready to fight. “Littlefinger will see it as an opportunity. He’ll assume I resent you. He’ll assume that Robb left _you_ to watch over me because he doesn’t trust me to rule. He’s convinced that neither of you have faith in me, or maybe he’s just trying to make me think that _he_ thinks that. I’m not sure. Either way, his main play is to set us against each other. With Robb gone, he’ll make a move. Will you help me?”

“Of course,” Jon answered.

“I know it isn’t your thing. I know you don’t like to be so underhanded. But if…”

“If it protects my family, I will do it,” Jon interrupted. Perhaps he answered too sharply; Sansa glanced at him, afterward, and he couldn’t read her expression. Robb didn’t seem to notice. He simply looked exhausted as he scanned the letter again.

_Do you worry about what happened to you?_ He wondered as he watched his brother. _Do you worry that you came back wrong? Do you worry about what you feel?_

_No_ , he thought. _Robb is worried about running the realm and keeping his family safe. Robb left a boy and came back a man. What did you come back as?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Outsider by Blanco White


	16. Sansa IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa responds to a letter and moves another chess piece in her game against Littlefinger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I genuinely thought that I would post every day this week, but alas! New Years made that impossible! I still plan on posting pretty quick for the rest of the week, though. I'm catching up on replies now, but here's a blanket thank you to everyone who commented!

Left alone in her solar, Sansa sat to respond to the letter she had received from Jaime Lannister the previous day. She hadn’t planned on it, initially; it was an odd letter. He compared her to her mother and father in a manner that seemed less than favorable, but he also thanked her earnestly for delivering the news about Brienne.

_I hope my sword isn’t causing her too much trouble among the northerners_ , he had written. _Tell her to cut the rubies out and hack at the lion’s head until it half resembles a wolf. It only half resembles a lion as it is. And it may keep her safe._

It was easy to see the broad, flashing grin of the Kingslayer behind those words. Wry and pretending at politeness while mocking her family. But Sansa read it again, now, after that breakfast meeting with Robb and Jon.

Jon had been so fierce when he said that he would do anything to help his family, and it made Sansa think of Jaime. Not the man she only barely knew, but the man from Brienne’s story. Sansa was still unsure if she could trust her sworn sword's judgement regarding the man Brienne plainly loved, but each letter from him seemed designed to chip away at her notion of the fearsome Kingslayer. His care for Brienne was as plain as Brienne’s care for him. It must have been horrible, being captured together. Suffering together. Perhaps it had bound them the way it had bound she and Theon. Hatred giving way to desperation. Enmity giving way to affection. She had feared it one-sided on Brienne’s part, but it wasn’t, was it?

Brienne said that Jaime Lannister had done all he had for love of his family. Jon had made her think of him with his grim determination to do the same. It blended together, mixed up in her mind. And besides, Jaime appeared to have abandoned some of that devotion: his response to her barb about Cersei had been plain. _My sister will not know about these letters. It would not do either of us any good, and I have no wish to make things more difficult for you or for Brienne._ It must have been a risk, continuing to write. Cersei was a paranoid woman, and she would have spies everywhere. How had he gotten away with it so far?

If he was lying, if Cersei was at all involved, then it was obviously some trap. Some trick to get Sansa to reveal something. Sansa couldn’t see Cersei’s hands on either letter, though. The content of them was too artless, and she didn’t think Cersei would bother to go to any great length to disguise her intention. Cersei was more about making people fear her. To say nothing of the fact that Sansa could tell that the letters had been written by a man who could no longer use his dominant hand. She tried a few words with her weaker hand and quickly abandoned the premise. How long had it taken Jaime to practice even writing as well as he could now? How long had it taken him to write the response to her letter? And yet he _had_ , and he had asked again about Brienne.

_Any further news would be welcome, if she does not deign to write me directly._

She reread his letter again, and her amusement and bemusement both grew together. There were so many things that needed to be done, and yet she was alone in her solar, thinking over how to respond to a mostly friendly letter from one of her family’s biggest enemies.

Robb was leaving again, and he would not be leaving alone. Davos would be going with him, of course, but he would need men to guard him and make sure they reached Dragonstone safely. Sansa wanted to be involved in deciding who it would be. The Blackfish was back in the Vale, already beginning the process of winning the lords over to his side and turning them against Littlefinger. Jon would be staying with her, to guard her and hopefully help her bait Littlefinger into making a move. There weren’t many other people she trusted.

_Your concern for the safety of my sworn sword is welcome, if misguided_ , she finally wrote. _If you are truly concerned, perhaps you will remind your sister that the lady stands between me and any harm. Brienne has far more to worry about from the lions than from the wolves._

That seemed good. She allowed the ink to dry as she considered what else to say. She understood why Brienne would not want to respond to his letters, even beyond the discomfort she plainly felt to be the focus of his regard; it would be difficult for Brienne to bandy words about with him. She was so _direct._ She had said many times to Sansa that she didn’t have a head for politics. She was like Jon in that way: better than she claimed to be, but awkward and uncertain with the more delicate aspects.

_Thank you also for your kind words about my parents_ , she wrote, trying for a tone as sarcastic and light as _his_ letter had been. _I am sure they would be pleased to know they made such an impact on you that their impressions linger long after they are gone. People tell me Jon and I look much like them. I always tell those people that we are more aware of the dangers, and that we are far more prepared to face them._

There. That was good. Airy enough to match his tone, but filled with warning as well. If Cersei _was_ dictating Jaime’s letters, hopefully she would understand that it would not be easy to get whatever it was she wanted from Sansa Stark.

* * *

Robb had changed in a thousand ways since he had returned, so it was almost refreshing to find that he took no more care with preparations than he used to. He still seemed baffled by the idea that there needed to be any fuss, as if he had assumed he would just mount a horse and strike off on his own toward Dragonstone.

He was impatient to be gone now that they had sent the raven in response to Daenerys Targaryen, and that, too, was so familiar. He had always hated _waiting,_ just like Arya. Once a course of action was decided on, he saw no reason to waste time in lingering when he could simply just _do_ whatever it was that needed to be done. Sansa chided him for wanting to rush into danger, but she didn’t think it was that. He simply wanted to be useful, and now he saw _this_ as the way in which he could be of use.

They still avoided the topic of his failures. They still avoided discussing their mother, and they never spoke of Sansa’s time in Kings Landing. In a way, Sansa was anxious for him to be off, as well. She didn’t want to talk about those things. She didn’t want to confront him with her pain the way she knew she had to. But it would mean saying goodbye to him again, and she wasn’t sure she was strong enough to do that.

In some ways, Sansa knew, she had been made harder by her experiences. She had grown tougher and colder out of necessity. Calloused to life every time it dealt her another sharp blow. She would face Robb’s leaving with a grim smile and the strength that she had learned, but it wasn’t easy, and when she was alone in her office, she allowed herself to feel it.

She just wanted them to be safe. She just wanted them to be home, together. Was this what her mother felt? When Sansa and Arya and Ned were riding off, was this the same hurt that seeped into Catelyn? Did she watch them packing and preparing and wonder why everyone couldn’t just _stay_?

* * *

She called Brienne into her office one morning, not many days before Robb was meant to leave, and she couldn’t help but look at the sword at Brienne’s hip. Brienne held on to its pommel often. Sansa had always assumed it to be a habit, some reflex, but maybe it was more than that. She could imagine that it must be a comfort, to hold tight to something that reminded her of someone she loved.

“My lady,” Brienne said in greeting, and she looked _nervous_. She was tense, and still standing. What did she think this was about, exactly?

“Please, Brienne,” Sansa said, gesturing to the chair.

Brienne sat, but she didn’t look any less concerned. She searched Sansa’s expression as if trying to find something. Sansa wished she knew what it was.

She hadn’t thought about how this would sound, but now that she was looking at Brienne’s face, she felt guilty. Brienne had been with her through a lot these past months. If it was entirely up to what Sansa _wanted_ , she would have Brienne beside her through everything. But to keep Brienne here when Robb was going to be heading out _there_ , alone, to face an enemy they know nothing about…it would be foolish. She couldn’t cage so fierce a fighter as Brienne for her own comfort when the threats she faced were no longer physical ones.

And, too, there was Littlefinger.

Littlefinger’s games were always dangerous, but they were especially dangerous to people like Brienne. People who were good and honorable and took too long to catch on to how deep Littlefinger's rot went. And Littlefinger had seen Brienne sparring in the yard. He knew that Brienne was strong, and fierce, and that she would give her life for Sansa if need be. Sansa had been uncomfortable with that knowledge, and she had been wary, but now it would be even worse. With Robb gone, Littlefinger would want to make some kind of move, and until Sansa knew what that move was…

“I want you to accompany Robb to Dragonstone,” she said. Brienne’s expression fell minutely in the several moments it took her to make herself go blank again.

“Are you releasing me?” she asked.

“No,” Sansa said. “Quite the opposite. I insist you come back.” She smiled, but Brienne still hesitated.

“I have been concerned about our last conversation,” she said. “And about what you might think of my attachment to Ser Jaime. I wanted to reiterate that…”

“That isn’t necessary, Brienne,” Sansa interrupted.

“I know he has chosen incorrectly. His sister blew up the sept with wildfire, and he chose to remain. Perhaps you were right about his honor.”

“Brienne, I don’t even remember what I said about his honor,” Sansa cautioned her. “Your history with Jaime Lannister has nothing to do with why I want to send you. You know that there are elements at work in this castle who would seek to drive us apart. Me, my brothers, you, anyone who is close to me. You understand that.”

It wasn’t a question, but Brienne answered, “yes, of course” anyway.

“I can’t risk you. You’re in danger here, though you may not think it.”

“And _you’ll_ be in danger if I leave.”

“I’ll have Jon. He can protect me from physical threats. But I can’t protect _you_ from the threats that go beyond that. You’ll be safer if you’re with Robb. And you’ll be going to meet three dragons. I’m almost envious.” She smiled again, and this time Brienne returned the gesture, though she still looked troubled. “Brienne, I promise. I think no less of you after hearing your story. I admire you. I don’t require you to hate all my enemies to the same degree I do. I only require you to protect me from them. And right now, it would protect me if you would go with Robb. Guard his back as you have guarded mine, and I will take care of the problems in my home. When you return, it will be safe for you again.”

Brienne hesitated, but still she nodded.

“Thank you, Lady Sansa,” she said, rising to her feet. “I’ll inform the king that I will be accompanying him.”

“Better you than me,” Sansa admitted. “He won’t be glad to know I want him looked after.”

Brienne agreed with an amused expression before she turned and left the room. She hesitated before she went, and Sansa expected another swearing of another oath. Another insistence that her love for Jaime Lannister wouldn’t outweigh her duties. Sansa was glad when she seemed to change her mind and continued out the door.

She wasn’t expecting that interaction to be so strangely off-balancing. Brienne’s nervousness and her desperation to prove that she was loyal…it made Sansa wish she had said something better, more empathetic. She couldn’t blame Brienne for caring for someone she shouldn’t. She had done it herself with Joffrey. Everyone around her had tried telling her that he was a monster, and even her own instincts had been recoiling, telling her that she was wrong, that he was saying cruel things because he _was_ cruel, and not just because he was a prince with a sharp tongue, like in the tales. She had been too stupid then to listen to any reason, but Sansa didn’t think Brienne was too stupid for anything. Perhaps Jaime Lannister did, at heart, want to be a better man. It still made Sansa feel a bit better to know that Brienne didn’t think he should be excused when he continued to make the same bad choices.

If Joffrey had lived. If Sansa _had_ been forced to marry him…what would she have thought of him? She had begun to think him a monster already before he cut off her father’s head, and it grew worse with the days that passed, when he finally showed her everything he was. If she was still there, still with him, would she be able to stand against him? Would she be able to stand against the queen?

She was only a young girl, and Jaime Lannister a man grown. Still, she knew it wasn’t always easy. Brienne must have had the right of it. Bad choices. Decisions made for love. She pitied both of them, she supposed. Falling in love with someone you shouldn’t must not be an easy way to live. Brienne shouldn’t love Jaime Lannister, and she must have known that he _couldn’t_ love her while he was busy worshipping his sister. And Jaime…

Well. It went without saying that you shouldn’t feel anything but a normal sibling affection for your sister. Or your brother. No matter how kind they were. No matter how strong they were. No matter how lost you were when you found them and how they made you feel safe ever since.

It must not have been easy to live like that, was the point. Sansa wouldn’t know, but it wasn’t difficult to imagine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is After the Storm by Mumford and Sons


	17. Daenerys II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dany and her advisers receive a raven from a man who's supposed to be dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone reading and commenting! I had a couple minutes to post this today on an otherwise busy day, so luckily for me this was a short one.

“You told me that Jon Snow had claimed the title of King in the North,” Dany said. She handed the missive back to Tyrion, taking in his shaken expression. Varys looked calmer, though he also looked vaguely intrigued. Dany was learning more about her advisors as the days passed here in their company, and she knew that there was little Varys liked so much as a good mystery.

“He _was_ ,” Tyrion said. “Robb Stark is dead. Or he’s meant to be, anyway. Another of my family’s gifts to the realm.”

“A gift returned, apparently,” Varys pointed out. “Because the boy isn’t dead.”

“Could it be Snow claiming his brother’s name?” Dany wondered. “You were surprised that the northerners chose him, given his birth. Maybe he wanted to make things simpler.”

“No, your grace,” Tyrion said. “Not even the Starks would try that. And they’re too honorable, besides. If Jon Snow meant to come, he would tell you. Stark must still be alive, somehow. Despite all the tales that the Freys took back to my father and nephew.”

“The Freys have always been a rather incompetent lot,” Varys suggested. “It’s possible they botched the assassination. I’m told it was a chaotic scene. With so much blood and death...and of course it was a Tully wedding, and I’m told Robb Stark has the Tully look. Perhaps there was a mix-up. A corpse mistaken for the king. They paraded him around, after, correct?”

“With his wolf’s head sewn to his neck, yes,” Tyrion answered. He glared at Varys. “Such a fun family, those Freys.”

“And the Boltons,” Varys pointed out blithely with the ease of a man who knows his family name isn’t on trial. “All dead now.”

“The north remembers,” Tyrion agreed wryly.

“Only your family remains,” Dany said. Tyrion inclined his head in agreement. “Do you think he means to take revenge?”

“Robb Stark is not so great a fool that he would think my death would do anything but cheer my sister.”

“And your brother?”

“Remove my sister, and my brother ceases to be a threat, I’ve told you,” Tyrion said. He was using the voice she hated: patient, almost condescending. She fixed him with a warning look.

“Your brother commands the Lannister armies,” she said. “If the Stark king means to demoralize him by attacking _you_ , or even by insisting on your head as payment for bending the knee…”

“Robb Stark wouldn’t have to look nearly so far to off-balance my brother. Jaime’s only friend in the world is sworn to the Stark house.” Apparently seeing her surprise, he smirked. Another expression she hated, because he always felt like he had won something when he surprised her. “Did you ever hear the story of how my brother lost his hand?”

“No,” Dany had to admit. She’d heard _of_ it, of course, from Varys. She had been glad to hear of it. The Kingslayer was still frightening to the little girl who lived inside her, but it helped to know that the great lion of Lannister had become little more than a declawed housecat, under his sister’s thrall. Dany would not have liked to lose her own hand, but she couldn’t say she thought the seven kingdoms were worse for that particular hand being lost.

“To hear her tell the tale, he lost his hand to protect a woman from rape. Not just any woman: the Maid of Tarth. A fearsome creature to look at, as tall and ugly as I am short and handsome, but noble and kind-hearted. A warrior maid who was once my brother’s jailer. And, for some reason, she and Jaime regard each other highly. She serves Sansa Stark now. There’s no one outside my family that my brother trusts more. If they wanted Jaime, they would only have to send the Maid of Tarth to fetch him, and he would let himself be led.”

“The Maid of Tarth,” Dany said. It sounded like a title from a story. “She, at least, shouldn’t hate you, if your brother made such a sacrifice for her. Perhaps her voice will hold some sway with this undead northern king.”

“Perhaps,” Tyrion agreed with a small grin.

“Robb Stark is a _good_ man,” Varys said, making the word sound like mocking epithet. “All of the Stark men are. It’s in their blood to be noble. If he says he’ll come, he’ll come, and there won’t be any tricks.”

“There were tricks enough in the Whispering Wood,” Tyrion said.

“Battlefield tricks, yes. He was a good military commander, before he chose to marry a woman he loved and break the marriage alliance his mother secured with the Freys.” This, too, was mocking, and Dany had to agree. Who would make such a choice?

“And his wife?” Dany asked. Were there other houses aligned with the Starks through this marriage? That could be useful.

“She was from Volantis,” Varys said. He understood her aim in the question, but he continued anyway with details she would not have wanted. “And she was killed, your grace. I’ve heard no whispers to indicate otherwise. She was pregnant.”

Varys smiled sadly, and his words cut Daenerys in a place she hadn’t realized was still so sensitive. She couldn’t help the way her hand reflexively went to her belly, curving around the flatness there, remembering when it was round.

“His mother, too,” Tyrion continued, not noticing the look that passed between Dany and Varys. “Catelyn Stark. Certainly no friend of mine, but her death was a tragedy.”

“Your family has ruined his,” Dany said. “Your father empowered the Freys. Your family empowered the Boltons. You married his sister and then she was married to a man after you who was by all accounts a monster.” She looked to Varys for confirmation, and Varys nodded. “Why would a man like him ally with us?”

“Because he’s desperate,” Tyrion said. Was this another one of his guesses? Or was it what he actually thought? Dany had been finding it increasingly difficult to tell.

“Is he?” Dany asked. “Your sister has a large army, but she has no allies.”

“I’ve told you before. Underestimating my sister would be a grave error,” Tyrion remarked.

“You overrate her,” Dany said. Varys made a considering expression that may have been agreement or may be argument. It was difficult to tell.

“We need the north against her,” Tyrion said. “Our armies are made up of untrained, untested…”

“I have the Unsullied, and I have dragons.”

“My sister has wildfire, and I know that she will use it.”

Sometimes it was difficult to tell, with Tyrion, what was real. Half the time she was convinced that he just wanted to listen to himself speak, and others she was convinced that all his bluster was just guessing with enough confidence that she believed it to be certainty. He was her Hand, and she would not have chosen him for the position if she didn’t have faith in him, but it was hard to trust anyone when she was so close to her goal and there were yet so many ways that they could fail.

“Do you think your sister could withstand my force?” she asked plainly.

“No,” Tyrion said. “But the losses would be devastating if you went against her now.”

“Devastating to me? Or devastating to you?” Dany wondered. Varys looked away, barely suppressing his mirth. Dany found that she was annoyed with that, as well. Maybe she was just in a poor mood. The longer they lingered on Dragonstone, the more discontent she felt with the whole of this ungrateful kingdom.

“To _you_ , your grace,” Tyrion said. “I have told you before, and I did not lie: I understand what it means that we are going against my siblings. I will plead for mercy for my brother if he is taken alive, and I will grieve for him if he is not. That doesn’t change the fact that I am loyal to you.”

Dany softened at the sight of his distress. Tyrion was older than her, and he had seen a lot. She sometimes forgot that he was also sensitive.

“Forgive me, my friend,” she said. “I do trust you.”

“The Starks,” Tyrion continued, grimacing already. “Are also loyal. You need people you can _count_ on. Dorne makes a good ally because they want revenge and you offer it. Highgarden for the same reasons. The Starks…”

“The Starks want revenge as much as the others,” Varys insisted testily.

“Yes, but it will go beyond that, for them. If they swear to you, they swear for good.” He met the eyes of the other advisor, and Varys nodded, conceding the point.

“The Starks were also loyal to the Usurper Robert Baratheon,” Dany pointed out. Tyrion sighed.

“In fairness to Ned Stark, your father _had_ just horribly murdered his father and brother,” Tyrion said. “For the crime of wanting Lyanna Stark returned to them after your brother kidnapped her.”

Dany frowned at that, but it was her turn to dip her head in acknowledgement. She should not allow herself to forget so easily the truth of what her family did to trigger the rebellion. Horrible things had been done to her family, but they had not happened for no reason. Rickard and Brandon Stark, she remembered. Killed for what? Her father’s pride?

“We will court the Starks,” Dany said. “And hope you are right.” She dismissed both of them, and then she was allowed to be alone with her table.

The map was beautiful, and she tried to imagine the places on it. The warm sands of Dorne. The beautiful flowers of Highgarden. The rocky heights of the Vale. The cold, snowy north. She remembered the snow falling on the throne in her vision in the House of the Undying. There had been a man, too, hadn’t there? A man on a throne with the head of a wolf.

For so long, it had been her purpose to rule. Her duty, perhaps, but her birthright. Her _destiny_. She had not thought of it as a job. A task that would not end. Her only thoughts were of taking back her home. How could she look ahead? She was so concerned with refusing to look back that she also refused to look far into the future, to when the battles would be done and the wars would be won. Now she had, and she wasn’t sure she liked what she saw.

Her father had ruled through fear. She had to accept that if she was going to be better. She had to stop getting defensive. Had to stop letting Viserys poison her memory. She didn’t want to rule that way. She wanted her people to love her. She wanted them to…

_Worship you?_

No. She banished that thought. She was uncomfortable with the idea, as anyone should be. Why should they worship her?

_Because you have dragons._

Yes. She had dragons. And they were a responsibility as much as they were a marvel, as she well learned in Meereen. She could not be a good ruler if she didn’t have control of her children. She could not be a good queen if she didn’t put her peoples’ needs before her own. The realm had endured enough of terrible kings and terrible queens, and she knew that she had to be better. A kingdom was something that should be earned, not granted.

The greens of the forests were enticing. The snow of the north captivating. She wanted to see it all. Her kingdom. She wanted to be beloved in all of it.

Tyrion was right to remind her of her father’s cruelties to the Starks. These Westerosi were right to be wary. Just as she had learned not to trust people so blindly, _they_ had learned not to trust a Targaryen ruler. Perhaps the Kingslayer _had_ killed her father unjustly, but maybe Tyrion was right about that, as well. Maybe he had been right to stop Aerys before more destruction could be wrought. She could not mold herself after Targaryen rulers who had come before her, even if they _were_ her birthright. She had to be better.

_I went on a journey_ , she thought. _I went to the far reaches of the world. I was a scared girl, and then a bride, and then a Khaleesi. I carried a child and I lost a child and I smothered my husband to free him. I am not of Westeros. I am of all of it. I have seen terrible places, and I have ended terrible reigns. Meereen…things went poorly in Meereen._

_So I must learn, and not allow myself to forget. I must look back if I am to move forward._

Yes, she had to learn, and she had to be better than the ones she had learned from. Otherwise, she would not be any better than the lesser kings and queens and their insistences that _they_ were the ones who deserved to rule. What good was breaking the wheel if you weren’t planning on replacing it with something better?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Black Lights by The Carbon Files


	18. Jaime III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime marches with his army, dreams of Brienne, and writes a letter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place in a kind of nebulous space, time-wise? I considered moving this chapter a little later for that reason, but ended up leaving it as it was, because it's been a while since a Jaime chapter has shown up. Listen, travel speeds are never going to be my thing, but let's imagine that it all makes sense, and let's assume that Robb, Brienne, and their small group are going to be moving MUCH quicker than the Lannister army.
> 
> also I still can't do smut but there's like...a whisper of it in this chapter, so I upped the rating to be safe. Don't get too excited lmao.

For weeks, they had planned the excursion. His lieutenants had grumbled and muttered about it, but they never showed any open dissention, so Jaime pretended not to hear it. His sister seemed determined to rule men with an iron fist, much the way their father would have. Fear and intimidation and distrust. She would have had him manipulate his officers into turning on each other. She would have had him hang men who spoke against her, whether those men were heard by one or one hundred. Jaime would not lead his men like that. He feared to, honestly; he feared that they would be able to tell he was just as angry about it as they were. If he tried to carry out his sister’s laws, they would see his disgust. If he tried to explain his sister’s choices, they would hear his hesitation.

Cersei’s initial orders had been Highgarden, but her Hand had cautioned her that Highgarden may not be so easy to conquer, and Kings Landing needed food and supplies. They didn’t have the time to wait for a long siege to be over. Cersei had actually listened to Qyburn for once, and she had ordered that Jaime would bring an extra company of men with him when he left Kings Landing. They would go to Casterly Rock, first, where they would recruit more men. Then they would split, and the extra company would escort food and goods from Lannisport back to Kings Landing as fast as possible. Cersei had written up an order for the Lannister army to seize anything from the city that they wished.

Jaime had argued with her on that. Like all of his arguments, she had ignored it. She had sneered at him afterward, _daring_ him to stand against her.

He backed down like he always did. What else was there to do? She had feared him once, when he came back from Riverrun, but she didn’t fear him anymore. She knew that he wouldn’t stop her. She knew that he wouldn’t depose her. She knew he wouldn’t even _leave_ her, because he was a weak and honorless man who could not abandon the woman he’d loved for his entire life, even when he felt nothing but emptiness and terror when he was with her anymore.

So, yes. They would seize goods and food from the people of the Westerlands to fund more of Cersei’s endless wars.

From Lannisport, Jaime and the rest of his men would march down the Ocean Road, on to Highgarden. They would take the castle _and_ The Reach for the crown, and they would kill Lady Olenna and all her men. They would finish what Cersei had started in regards to wiping out the Tyrell line. And why? Jaime wasn’t sure. Olenna was little threat on her own.

_Pettiness_ , he knew. _It’s because she dares to stand against Cersei_.

She was an old woman, defenseless and grieving the family Cersei had killed.

Jaime dreamed sometimes of Brienne. She never spoke to him. She only stared at him. Her big eyes were disappointed. He knew exactly what she thought of him.

_You should have killed me at Riverrun_ , he thought once when he woke. _Gods, I wish you had._

If only he had given her enough reason.

* * *

Bronn left not long after they had ridden out from Kings Landing.

He was there one night, and then in the morning, his things were gone. His horse, too. One of the sentries said that they saw him riding off in the direction of Castle Stokeworth. Apparently, Bronn got tired of waiting for his reward, and he didn’t fancy going up against a woman who was rumored to be the ally of the dragon queen.

Jaime was, rather pathetically, a bit despondent when he realized that Bronn wasn’t coming back. It wasn’t like he thought the man was his friend in truth, but…he was the closest thing to it that Jaime had left, and he just _went_.

At his most paranoid moments, Jaime wondered if Bronn had received some better offer. If there was anyone Bronn truly liked, it was Tyrion. Or maybe Cersei had plied him away with gold. She never liked to share Jaime’s attention, and if she thought that Bronn could be a tool to him, she would pay him whatever she needed to remove him. Or perhaps it was just because she wanted him isolated. Alone.

It worked, whether that was her purpose or not. His men were deferent as always, though he felt their resentment more easily now that he didn’t have Bronn dogging his heels, always threatening to carry out whatever violence Jaime could not. He was used to hearing their dissent when they thought they were alone; Cersei might not have wanted to hear it, but her campaigns weren’t always popular. Most of the Lannister soldiers shared his disdain for the Freys they were forced to work with, and they had all been young boys once who dreamed of fighting as fiercely as the Blackfish. And now _this_ : going against their former allies. Attacking Highgarden because Cersei had, in short time, destroyed the economy of Kings Landing and stripped the smallfolk of their food and now needed to find a way to replace it.

It wasn’t all Cersei. That wouldn’t be fair, and it wouldn’t be accurate, either. But years of war followed now by Cersei making all the worst choices out of a desire to protect herself had left the kingdom in a vulnerable state, and it was the people of Highgarden who must suffer from it. The Lannister army was not all made up of the second and third sons of minor nobles. Most of them were from Lannisport or the surrounding towns. Some of them were from Kings Landing. Some of them had probably hailed from Flea Bottom. Cersei sent them to harm the smallfolk, and she never considered who it was she was actually _sending_. How could she not see that? Jaime didn’t know. He had given up trying to make her understand. He had given up on so _much_.

When his soldiers called his sister their worst words, he melted out of the darkness to growl and snap at them like a good dog should, out of muscle memory or perhaps a want for it to _mean_ something, that Cersei was in power and that they were the only ones left. He wanted for his choices to have been the right ones. He knew they weren’t, but there was no way to take them back, and so he could only move forward. The men always cowered and nodded and meekly apologized, but he knew they would use their worst words for him, next, and they would simply be more careful about where they spoke them.

Men were men, and it was easiest for them to attack Cersei with words that labeled her nothing worse than _woman_. Those were the charges that were easiest to answer to, but Jaime stopped himself one night when he heard a group of soldiers and camp followers around a fire talking about her policies and her lack of care for the smallfolk. He listened, instead, lurking in the shadow cast by a tent. Nothing they said crossed the line into disrespect. They also weren’t wrong. Jaime found that that was worse than the empty words that had no power. They were _right_. Cersei didn’t want to hear it. Cersei never wanted to hear anything from anybody. She used to be cautious, and she used to listen, but now she had found herself in power, and it was the only thing she had left. She had convinced herself of her own superiority, and nobody’s words could reach her. But she was driving her people to madness and starvation, and she could not rule in fear forever.

Eventually, someone was going to stop her.

It wouldn’t be easy with the Mountain at her side, but she had plenty of servants and handmaidens, and Jaime knew better than anyone how easy it was to blend into the background when you were always there. No doubt Aerys would never have thought of Jaime as a threat, and Cersei would dismiss her handmaidens as nothing right up until one of them cut her throat in her sleep to save the realm from her chaos.

She wasn’t safe. With her on the throne, none of them were safe.

It should be him, but he knew it wouldn’t be.

He had control of her army. The majority of them seemed to be against the things she’d ordered, and yet they marched where Jaime told them to march, and there had been far fewer desertions than he had expected. Perhaps Jaime wasn’t the only one who felt trapped; the realm was burning and starving and freezing all at once, and being in the army at least guaranteed a meal and a place to rest your head. If he turned them now, marched them instead toward Riverrun to take it back from the Freys, it was possible that most of them would go gladly. If he wanted the crown from his sister, they would give it to him. If he made common cause with the Starks, they would agree.

Not all of them, no. But even the ones who didn’t feel entirely right about it would follow. It would still be better than _this_.

Jaime didn’t turn his army. He marched on. Drove them closer to Casterly Rock with the end goal of turning south towards Highgarden. It was a slow march, marred often by bandit groups and small pockets of fighting men who may have belonged to Highgarden’s army at some point. Perhaps the army was dragging its feet, but Jaime wasn’t any more eager than they to reach their destination, so perhaps that wasn’t a surprise.

* * *

“The dragon queen,” one man said, sitting by the fire. Jaime was meant to be sleeping in his tent nearby, but he couldn’t, and he stared at the shadows on the roof instead, watching the way the firelight made them move. He had always hated the way fire never let anything sit still. “She’s got three dragons, they say. None of us are a match for three dragons. Even if he still had both his hands…”

The soldier trailed off to hisses and quiet reminders of which pavilion was Jaime’s, as if it wasn’t obvious enough from its size. It was funny, maybe, but Jaime didn’t feel much like smiling. What had happened to him?

“The dragon queen will burn the city to the fucking ground,” another Lannister soldier said, quieter but not nearly quiet enough. “We should be glad we’re out of there.”

“She’s probably got time to burn us on her way,” another man said, and they all laughed. Jaime recognized the high, hysterical edge to it. Men often laughed like that when they felt it was hopeless. He swallowed back bile.

“What about the wildfire?” someone asked. Jaime felt his stomach churn violently “Does the dragon queen know about the wildfire? She can’t let the whole city burn if she wants to rule it.”

“She can rule from anywhere. She’s already got Dragonstone, and that’s as good a castle as any. She has _dragons_. She can burn the Red Keep to the ground, with the Lannister cunt inside. She can burn the whole city. It won’t matter. She flies away, builds a castle of the bones somewhere.”

“You’re drunk.”

“I’m not. I saw it in a dream. Whole castle made of burnt bones.”

“You’re drunker than I thought, if you think a _dream_ means anything.”

“We’re all going to die. I saw that in my dream, too.”

“Shut the fuck up,” one man said, and there were the sounds of scuffle. Before Jaime could drag himself out of bed to end it, it quieted itself, and their voices dropped to low murmurs that became comforting, like the sound of water. A creek, maybe. Like the one he and Brienne had fought beside.

* * *

_You killed my father_ , the dragon queen would say when he was dragged before her, having been taken in battle. Would she order him beheaded? Or would she let her dragons burn him alive? Or eat him, perhaps. What did dragons even eat? He imagined they were too big to get much satisfaction from eating a single man, but he _did_ have a whole army at his back. Maybe she’d feed _them_ to the dragons, too. Maybe all their Lannister-loyal bones would be enough to sate the beasts.

When he was asleep, it was Aerys. It always came back to Aerys. He was on his throne. He was mad. He was screaming. _Burn them all. Burn them all._

_Yes, I killed your father_ , Jaime thought, but he could not move towards the throne. The creeping green of wildfire was spilling down the steps. A million waterfalls plummeting off the dais and spreading towards him. Slowly, slowly. His sword caught the light. It was Oathkeeper.

_Burn them all,_ Aerys said.

Brienne’s fingers curled softly through his hair. He had been weeping.

“I’m here,” she said. “I’m here.”

His scars throbbed, and he wrapped the arm around her, and he felt the skin beneath her shirt as his stump pulled the fabric up. They were in a bed. A canopy bed, somewhere cold. Pressed together for warmth, and he never wanted to leave. He held her tighter to keep her there. She pressed her lips to his forehead.

“You killed him,” she said. “You are a man of honor, Ser Jaime.”

“Jaime,” he begged her. “Please. Just Jaime.”

“Jaime,” she said.

She kissed him. The shock of it, bone-jarring like a hit with a blunted tourney sword, sent him skittering out of the dream and back into his tent, where he was half-hard already and fumbling for his breeches with his stump, cursing and switching to his left hand, before suddenly remembering himself, and dropping his hand away.

He sat up. He breathed deeply. The tent was empty. The firelight still played on the ceiling, turning red into gold and into the black of shadow. He could still feel Brienne’s lips on his, and he wondered if that was what they would taste like. He wondered if they would be so soft.

He lay back down, and he took himself in hand. He shouldn’t. He should have been ashamed to think of her. She was a maiden. A woman of a highborn house. She was the closest thing he had to a friend. He respected her.

He _wanted_ her. He palmed his cock with his left hand. He had gotten better at this since he lost his hand, but it still never quite felt right, and it usually took a little time for him to get into the rhythm of it. It seemed like it might be easier tonight, and he didn’t want to think about what that might mean. He remembered every aching second of what she had looked like when she rose out of the bath in front of him. He remembered how gentle she had been when he lost his hand, even though she hated him still. He remembered the way she had looked at him when he had to leave her behind in Harrenhal. The way she said _goodbye, Ser Jaime._

He was spilling not long after that, and he caught his breath, resting his maimed forearm over his eyes. He should have been ashamed. He shouldn’t have been smiling. He shouldn’t have stroked himself through it, thinking still of Brienne and what it might feel like to have her for real.

His ardor cooled quickly, as he remembered.

Enemies now. Enemies for as long as he still stood with his sister against the family Brienne had sworn herself to.

Then he _was_ ashamed.

His ardor had cooled, but his dream hadn’t quite faded enough. He drifted there, near sleep. He wondered how she fared in Winterfell. Was it too cold? Were her nights too lonely? Was she happy, serving such an _honorable_ family? Was she well? Was she safe? Did she sleep better than he did? He imagined she must. Nestled safely beneath her furs, with a fire roaring in the fireplace. It was a nice place to imagine her.

He hoped she would never hear of what he was leading his men to do.

* * *

In the morning, before they marched again, he penned another letter to Sansa Stark. He hardly knew what he was thinking with this continued correspondence. Cersei would kill him if she found out, or she would warp it in some way, use it to take revenge or use it to gain an advantage. Jaime had kept it hidden so far, and hopefully it would stay that way.

Sansa’s letters were sharp and witty, and he knew she plainly did not trust him. She wrote often of Brienne with a mocking edge. Perhaps that was why he kept writing her. It was the only scrap of news of Brienne he ever got, and he didn’t mind being mocked for things he deserved to be mocked for. At least she never mentioned his penmanship. She could be polite about _some_ things.

Brienne had still refused to write to him. He tried not to let it bother him, but he had to periodically remind himself how little he _deserved_ for her to write to him in order to convince his wretched brain to shut up.

_Lady Sansa,_ he wrote. She never graced her letters to _him_ with a salutation. The first time she wrote, she called him _Kingslayer_ , but she had not used any title since. He liked to think that it was a sign of her deepening regard: too polite to call him Kingslayer any longer, but not quite fond of him enough to allow Ser Jaime. _I trust you and Lady Brienne are well. Your last letter did not mention her at all._

Was that too pathetic? He imagined that Sansa would likely think it so. He left it in. He liked to believe that she thought his transparent, pathetic yearning for word of Brienne was funny and not just…well, pathetic. Especially since he had some actual _advice_ he would like to offer her, and he wanted there to be a chance that she would actually listen to it.

_You wrote to me once that you and your half-brother are more prepared to face threats than your parents were_ , he started. _Yet it seems to me that your parents made some mistakes I already hear you are making. The company they kept, for example._

Was that too vague? He didn’t want to warn Sansa away from the fucking Blackfish, after all. He wished he could just state “don’t trust Littlefinger, you little idiot” plainly, but he didn’t think that would go over well, and there was a _tone_ to maintain, here.

_Some friends are better kept at a distance. I will assume, for my own peace of mind, that you have yours wrapped around your little finger._

Now that was surely _too_ obvious, but he was hardly going to start over again. The letters were hard enough to form with his left hand the first time.

_For the sake of Lady Brienne (and for the sake of a weary old knight’s hopes for future entertaining letters) I hope you heed my advice._

Not that he had actually _given_ her any, but the message should have been clear. If Sansa was half as clever as her mother had been, she would know that he was asking her to kill the traitorous little snake. Being a Stark and all, he assumed that she wouldn’t, but maybe she would at least be wary enough to keep an eye on him.

Cersei had been glad to hear that Littlefinger was with the Starks, of course. She had been convinced that he would turn against them and take the North for himself.

Jaime still wasn’t sure exactly _what_ Littlefinger could want with the north, but he had a feeling it wasn’t anything that Sansa would want him to have, and when Sansa suffered, Brienne suffered, and Jaime…

Well. Jaime had added enough to that suffering. He wanted to do what he could to prevent it, if he couldn’t be there for her in any other way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is So Far by Ólafur Arnalds & Arnór Dan


	19. Jon IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robb, Brienne, and Davos start off for Dragonstone. Jon worries about Sansa.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to everyone reading and commenting! I was planning on updating yesterday, but some unfortunate stuff happened that required my attention, so I had to skip it (everything's fine now! let's call it a family urgency instead of family emergency!) I may be able to update tomorrow? But I'm tragically back to work after my week off, so you can expect 2-3 day delays again, as before!

Saying goodbye to Robb again in the courtyard felt like it must be some cruel trick of the gods.

So much had changed since the first time they said their goodbyes, but it felt like they were those same children again, in a way that made _dread_ well up within him. Jon could tell that Sansa felt the same. Her back was straight and her face blank, but he could tell her nervousness in the way she kept pulling her cloak tighter around herself, as if to shield against the cold, though it was warmer than usual today.

Brienne stood with Robb, which was another difference that stood starkly. Jon had been surprised when Brienne informed him that she would be traveling with Robb to Dragonstone. They had been sparring in the yard, as they often did of late, and she had mentioned it so casually that he knew she had assumed that he had already been told.

But of course he hadn’t been told. Sansa kept things close, now. Sometimes she kept things _too_ close.

Davos had mentioned it again recently, the fact that Sansa kept he _and_ Robb guessing about so many things. Jon had stopped him and said the same thing he always did: he trusted Sansa. She understood Littlefinger better than any of them did, and Jon knew that if she _truly_ needed help, she would ask them for it. But it was difficult not to worry when he saw her receiving ravens and quickly tucking the scrolls they delivered away, as if she didn’t want anyone to see the seal. It was difficult to trust when he was constantly being pushed off and gently told “don’t worry”. He knew that she hated when he tried to protect her, but he wondered if she knew how _he_ hated it when she refused to let him in.

Standing in the courtyard, hugging Robb desperately, she seemed as trustworthy as she ever had, and Jon was sorry for doubting her. He felt again that particular ache that came when he thought of her and the fact that no matter what he did, he couldn’t completely keep her safe. It was too late for him to even _start_. So many horrible things had already happened, and no matter what he did, he couldn’t make those horrible things go away.

He wanted to. It was something that pulsed within him, grew stronger the more he thought about it. She was right when she said that no one could protect anyone. The things he had seen at Hardhome, especially, were impossible to protect against. But still he wished to be given the opportunity to try. If only she would let him.

Robb was whispering to her, and she was nodding, and she looked in Jon’s direction with a sheepish smile, and she reached out and tugged him in so that the three of them could hug again, just as they had when Robb first returned.

“We’ll miss you,” Sansa was saying. “Promise us you’ll return this time.”

“You know I can’t promise that,” Robb said with an indulgent smile. He drew her in and pressed his lips to her forehead. _Brotherly_. A normal gesture, with normal feelings attached to it. Jon forced his own memories away. Robb was saying, “but I will do my best. Hopefully, Tyrion is better than his siblings.”

“His sister, at least,” Sansa qualified, though Brienne didn’t seem to be paying attention. She was talking to Podrick, who hadn’t stopped looking giddy since he found out that they were riding off to another adventure.

“I’ll be safe,” Robb said. Sansa nodded, and Robb pulled her into another hug. She let him, slumping miserably against him. Taking a moment to show her true exhaustion and sadness to see him go. Robb looked between them. “Keep each other safe,” he said. “Trust each other.”

“We will,” Sansa said. “Trust Brienne.”

“I will.” Sansa moved off to say her goodbyes to her sworn sword, and Robb stepped closer to Jon. “She wouldn’t want me to say it, but…”

“I’ll look out for her. I’ll keep an eye on Littlefinger.”

“Good. I expect to hear some news of you duelling with the man when he tries to wed her.”

Robb smiled like it was a joke and clapped Jon on the back, and Jon forced a smile. He had dreamed of something similar, the other night. Some fool dream about fighting Littlefinger when he asked for Sansa's hand. He hadn’t been able to shake it. He wished he could. He hated feeling like…

“I won’t let him touch her,” he said, and Robb nodded. “Remember.”

“The threat beyond the Wall,” Robb agreed. “I remember. Nothing is more important than that.”

“It’s the lives of everyone,” Jon said. Robb nodded. He was so sincere like this. So kingly.

“I know. I’ll do my best to convince her. In my rather limited experience, kings and queens don’t like to be told that there’s a threat they should be focused on when they think their chosen battle is the most important.”

“Aye,” Jon admitted with a grin. “I know it too.”

Robb must have seen that Jon still worried, because he put out his hand again and squeezed Jon’s shoulder through his cloak.

“She will know of the importance of it,” he said. “And if she refuses to accept it, we’ll devise some way to prove it to her. The Wall still stands, and we’ve had no ravens from the Watch of any sightings of the army of the dead. There is still time.”

“Not much,” Jon said. “I can feel it.”

“I will speak with her,” Robb promised, and Jon believed him.

Sansa was hugging Brienne. Brienne seemed unsure how to touch her, and she was holding onto Sansa with the delicacy she would use for a particularly sickly child. Robb laughed at them both, and it sounded so much like it would have sounded when he was young.

“Lady Brienne, my sister isn’t some newborn kitten,” he said, striding over to them. Brienne flushed, but she was smiling too, and Jon watched them. It was just like when he was young; he was the only one not smiling.

There was so much to worry about. The northern lords had not demanded his head when the name of his father had been revealed. They had not demanded that he be sent back to the Wall. They had looked at him with wariness and discomfort, but in the end Lyanna Mormont declared him still Stark enough for her, and that pronouncement had been cheered for thoroughly by the rest.

_Still_. He could feel them watching him. Wondering if he was just another Rhaegar. Would they ever trust him again? _Could_ they trust him? _Targaryen madness_. He wondered if they were all thinking it, or if he was the only one who worried.

* * *

Jon and Sansa stood side by side as they watched Robb and Brienne and Davos and the rest ride off toward Dragonstone. It would be weeks before they would see Robb again, and Jon felt the length of those weeks stretching out in front of them. It was starting to snow. There was so much for them to prepare for. Still, Jon didn’t want to move. He wanted to watch until the others disappeared.

“Why did you send Brienne with Robb?” he asked finally. He had wondered. It hadn’t seemed right to ask, with Brienne always nearby. He hadn’t wanted to make anyone think that he disagreed with Sansa’s choice, though of course he did.

“Not here,” Sansa said smoothly, and then she ducked her head and walked, expecting him to follow.

* * *

Back in Sansa’s solar, she shook out the snow from her hair and handed her heavy cloak off to a handmaiden, dismissing her kindly. She closed the door behind her, and she locked it, too.

“Littlefinger,” she said quietly, forcing Jon to lean closer to hear. “Is not the sort of man Brienne can protect me from. He is the sort of man that I want to protect _Brienne_ from.”

“Same as me,” Jon pointed out. Sansa sighed.

“Yes, Jon,” she said. “Same as you. I’ve told you before that I don’t mean it as an insult. You and Brienne are very clever in your own ways, but Littlefinger is…he is always doing the worst thing, and you and Brienne often don’t even _think_ of the worst thing.”

“That’s not true,” Jon said. He tried for light and airy, but instead he sounded sullen and defensive, as ever. “I’ve seen plenty. I’ve done plenty. I’ve made difficult choices.”

“I don’t doubt that.” Sansa’s hand was on his arm, suddenly. Warm. Much warmer than Robb’s had been when they stood out in the snow. Different. Jon fought the urge to snatch his arm away. “But we need to play a careful game with Littlefinger now. He still controls too many of the pieces on the board. Until we know that my uncle has been successful beyond a doubt…”

“Right,” Jon said.

“I wish it was as simple as throwing him down and taking his head, Jon, truly.”

She was looking at him with something pleading in her expression. He wanted to believe her. He _did_ believe her. He wanted to believe her without reservation. But it would be so easy for Sansa to deceive him. She wouldn’t even have to try very hard. She would just have to ask him for something in a very sweet voice, and he would give it to her. Or she would have to look at him sadly, in that exact way she was looking at him now. She had to know at this point that he would give her anything he could.

“What do you need me to do?” he asked wearily. Sansa sighed and sat at her desk, pulling a letter out of her pocket and setting it aside for later. The seal was that of the Lannister house. He looked at her, but she seemed not to notice his gaze. She was looking out the window, still considering.

“I want Littlefinger to believe that I’m ready to hear him out,” she said. “I want him to come to me and tell me his plans. It’s the only way we can know for sure what he aims to do, and he won’t tell me plainly until he thinks he has a chance at convincing me.”

“You think he would tell you the truth at all?”

“I think he would tell me the parts that I would need to help him with. There is never just any one truth with Littlefinger.”

Jon nodded. She sounded so _tired._ He suddenly felt sorry for doubting her. This dance seemed to go back and forth a lot. Jon wondering, then feeling sorry for wondering. Jon trusting, then hoping that that trust wasn’t misplaced. There were days when the thought of Sansa betraying him or anyone else in the family was absurd. There were days when he thought she was otherwise far too good to be true.

“How should we do that?” he asked. He sat down at the other chair at Sansa’s desk, spreading his hands when she looked at him questioningly. “I’m here to help, Sansa. How should we do it?”

She must have seen his good intentions in his expression, because some of the tension left her shoulders. Jon had to remind himself that he wasn’t the only one who had defaulted to distrust after enough betrayals.

“Distance,” she told him. “We have to pretend at distance. Not speak as often as we’re accustomed. At public dinners, we act strained. We should meet up periodically. Here, perhaps, or in your own quarters, but only when we’re sure it’s safe. I need him to think that I feel alienated by you and Robb. I need him to think that the two of you don’t trust me enough to let me rule, and that I’m resentful of that.”

“Are you?” Jon had to wonder.

“No,” Sansa answered, with a curious smile. “But it’s an easy thing for Littlefinger to believe. He resents everyone who has something he wants and does not have.”

Jon nodded; that was easy to believe. Littlefinger always had an expression on his face like he _hungered_. No matter how much he had, no matter how much he had been given, he would always want more.

“Robb told us to trust each other,” he said.

“I wouldn’t need Robb to tell me to trust you,” Sansa promised. “Did you?”

“No,” Jon said. He wished it was less true.

“Good,” Sansa replied. She looked again at the window, sighing, and she pulled open the Lannister letter she had been keeping in her pocket. “We have so many enemies now, you and I. And fewer friends beside us than we had this morning. But we can survive it if we work together.”

She looked at him at last, and he could see that she was worried. It was only visible for a moment. She did such a good job at keeping everything hidden, otherwise. He nodded, and he smiled so that she would see that he agreed.

“Whatever you need,” he reminded her, and he stood up. She nodded, and she turned back to her letter. It was written in a poor hand, and he could not make out any of the words, but it was long. He thought of asking who it was from. Would she tell him? He went for the door instead.

_I trust you_ , he wanted to say. _I trust you_. Over and over again until he was sure he believed it. He wanted nothing in life quite so badly as he wanted to trust in Sansa.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Despair by Goratie


	20. Brienne III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brienne spars with the king as they head towards Dragonstone, and she dreams of Jaime.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you as always to everyone who read + commented!!! You're the fuel that keeps this train chugging exhaustedly along!

Brienne worried for Sansa the moment they left Winterfell, but it wasn’t until a few days into their ride toward White Harbor that the worry grew uncomfortably sharp within her.

It happened the last time she left her lady too, of course. Her goal to rescue and protect Lady Sansa had been a part of her for so long that to abandon her, undefended, even for good reason, had left Brienne feeling unsettled and adrift. She had been tasked then with securing the Tully army to help Sansa and Jon fight against the Boltons, and it had been a worthy goal. She had known it would be a quick enough trip, too, if things went well.

Of course it _hadn’t_ gone well, technically, and her last glimpse of Jaime still haunted her when she allowed herself to think of it, but it _had been_ quick.

This trip promised to be longer.

Brienne trusted King Robb’s judgement, and of course it made sense that they had to respond in some way to the dragon queen’s summons. They had fearsome enough enemies in the Lannister army and the supposed army of the dead. They did not need to make another by being too hasty to refuse a possible alliance with this new queen.

Still. A Targaryen queen bent on conquering Westeros with three dragons in her possession was not an ordinary alliance to make. And there was the _tone_ of the letter. King Robb had read it aloud the first night on the road, reminding them all what they were facing. Tyrion Lannister’s words had been pretty enough, but their prettiness didn’t do much to conceal the threats hidden within them. Words like _the rightful queen_ and _we would like to give you a chance_. The letter had been addressed to Lady Sansa, and it was flippant about their former forced marriage in a way that made Brienne want to curl her fingers into a fist. It seemed that there were men at every turn looking to claim Sansa’s hand, and none of them were worthy of her.

Not that Tyrion’s letter indicated that he wanted her _back_ , but from what little Brienne knew of Tyrion, he wouldn’t state anything like that so baldly. He would cloak everything in jests and half-truths. It was possible he didn’t even understand the threat that the mention of the marriage would necessarily make. Or perhaps he did, and it was a threat meant to convey one of the Stark brothers to Dragonstone as quickly as possible to answer it—just like Brandon Stark had abandoned caution for love of Lyanna.

Or. Well. One Stark brother and one cousin.

Brienne still had trouble remembering that Jon Snow was who he was. Lady Sansa had adapted quickly; as soon as the information was made public to the northern lords, she had begun to name him cousin instead of brother. Brienne was always tripping over it, always hesitating a moment too long. King Robb did the same. But Lady Sansa had always been careful with the politics of everything, and she likely wanted to ensure that the northern lords knew that Jon’s parentage meant nothing to her. He was still Jon.

He had been amused the day after the announcement when Brienne didn’t know what to call him, but their sparring had quickly returned equilibrium. Jon was still Jon. He had never had the Stark name before, and he would not take the Targaryen name now. Still a bastard. Still _him_. She had been used to him as king, and it did not take very long for her to get used to him as a descendent of Rhaegar and Lyanna. She would miss their sparring sessions when she was away, and she knew that Podrick would, too. Jon was a fierce fighter. Sparring with him reminded her often of the fight she’d had with Jaime on the bridge. Jaime had been chained and weak from a year of captivity, but he was still the most graceful fighter Brienne had ever seen. It would have been an honor to watch the two of them fight at their best, though Jon had been little more than a boy the one time he met Jaime.

He had spoken of that single meeting with some amusement, and he had grilled her for information on the way Jaime fought the one time she faced him. It made Brienne sad for Jaime’s loss all over again. She had been unkind to him when he lost his hand, angered by his eagerness to die because of it, but the more time passed, the more she realized why he had despaired. It could not have been easy to continue living when the thing he lived for had been taken from him. _I_ was _that sword hand_ , he’d said once, and the more she heard of the legend of Jaime’s fighting prowess, the more she longed for it to be returned to him.

_Perhaps it would give him the strength to make better choices._ No. She couldn’t think like that. Jaime had chosen his path. She should not waste her time in wishing he would pick a more worthy one.

After a week of sparring only with Podrick, she proposed the idea of sparring to the king. It took a certain amount of courage to suggest it, because she still didn’t know Robb enough to know how he would react. She was relieved when he agreed so readily, and with such a brilliant smile.

She still didn’t know what Robb thought of her, or of her Lannister connections. She often saw him looking at her sword. She supposed that honor should compel her to offer it back to him, but she couldn’t bring herself to say the words. It was the sword that Jaime had given her. It would always be hers, he had said. She couldn’t let go of it. If the king wanted it, he would have to ask her for it.

He didn’t.

He wasn’t the same fighter his cousin was. He was stronger than she expected, given how self-deprecating he was about the idea when she first proposed it, suggesting he would be a better match for her squire. He still had the right instincts. He was better at blocking and defending than attacking. He was breathing heavily by the end of a very short time, and he would not be able to overpower her without some serious work.

“It’s the best I’ve fought since,” he said, after. It was a proud look that he gave her. Proud and pleased with himself and a little bit amused at his own incompetence. “Perhaps Sansa saw my last weak attempt against Jon at Winterfell and that was why she sent you.”

“I know why she sent me,” Brienne said. She sheathed her sword and was glad to have its familiar weight back on her hip.

“She told you, then? About Litttlefinger?”

“Lord Baelish, yes,” Brienne said. Robb snorted.

“I don’t think we need to afford him the courtesy of a full title, do you?” he asked. “Sansa hasn’t told me the whole of it, I’m sure. Has she told you?”

“I know enough.”

“Yes. I’m sure you do.” He smiled at her, and Brienne had another of those odd moments when she felt Lady Catelyn’s love for Robb. His mischievous smile. The way his curls bounced about his head like a halo. Catelyn Stark had loved her children with such a fierceness, and Brienne had admired her lady so _much_ that it was easy to feel. _I will keep them safe_ , she promised the ghost of her dead lady, just as she always did when she felt it. Robb sat down on the log by the fire and gestured her over. Podrick was off gathering water, and the other men were a safe distance away, pretending that they had not been watching the fight. Brienne sat on the other side of the log. Robb looked into the fire. “My sister means to win at Littlefinger’s own game. Do you know how?”

“No, your grace.”

“Please don’t call me that,” Robb laughed. “Not you. I know you hate me.”

Shocked, Brienne turned to look at him, and his confidence faltered when he saw her face.

“I don’t hate you,” she said, dumbly, forgetting in her surprise to say _your grace_ like she meant to. “I…”

_I stood against Ser Jaime to protect you. Do you not know how difficult that was for me?_

“Perhaps hate was the wrong word.”

“It _was_.”

“Disdain my presence?”

“You’re delusional.”

They both froze, then, but only for a moment before Robb burst into laughter. Brienne felt her face flush. She hadn’t meant to say that. She had gotten too used to speaking freely with Podrick. She tried to stammer out an apology, but Robb waved her off. He was still chuckling when he next spoke.

“Please, don’t apologize,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you to snap at me. I don’t know what sort of king you think I am, but I don’t want to be the sort of king that my sister’s sworn sword is afraid to speak to. I would like us to be friends. I know that you likely think…”

“I said already that I don’t hate you.”

“No, but a woman of your honor surely has to wonder at mine.”

Brienne frowned at him. She had heard him say such things before, and she knew that she could not really argue with them. Robb had made some choices that she would not have made, surely. Choices that she _had not_ made when the time came. But it was so easy to understand him. Love…Brienne still had yet to fully understand the romantic love of songs and stories. But if Jaime stood before her and offered to pledge his love to her… It would be much harder to turn her back on that than it would be to allow herself that happiness, no matter how dishonorable it would be.

“I don’t wonder at your honor,” she said. “I know you are a good man, and I think you will make a good king. I am sorry for your loss, and I am sorry that you must carry the guilt of it as well, I suppose. I understand your choice.”

“Do you?” Robb’s expression was just teasing enough that Brienne found she wasn’t so much embarrassed as she was annoyed.

“Yes,” she said. “If I had been in your position…”

“You _were_ in my position,” Robb said, echoing her thoughts of only a few moments ago. She smiled slightly. Wryly.

“No,” she said. “I wasn’t. I chose to honor my oaths rather than give them up for a sentiment that wasn’t returned. That isn’t the same at all.”

Robb made a thoughtful sound and looked once more into the fire.

“I suppose,” he said. “If I was you, I would still hate me.”

“I think you already do that enough for the both of us, don’t you?” Brienne asked. He smiled again, and his eyes when they met hers glittered with a sharp kind of mirth that made him look for a moment like his mother.

“Well said,” he admitted.

Silence descended over them, but it seemed to Brienne to be a more comfortable one than before. They knew each other’s minds better than they had. Brienne considered telling him that she admired him, in truth, in some shameful, deep part of her heart, for choosing what he had. It was obviously the wrong choice, but that was easy to say in hindsight. It must have felt glorious to choose love in the moment.

It probably wouldn’t be well received, considering. She didn’t say anything.

“Can Sansa handle Littlefinger?” she asked. Robb sighed.

“I think she can,” he said. “Though I hardly know if that’s a logical answer or just...faith in her. She’s so different from how she was as a girl. I may just be taking her competence now for granted. Littlefinger is a worthy foe, she tells me. He seems like a fawning snake as bad as any of them, but Sansa would know better than me. We have to trust her.”

“I do,” Brienne said. Robb smiled.

“So do I,” he replied.

* * *

Some of the soldiers that night goaded Podrick into singing a song for them, and he did. It was sad and mournful, and it rang inside Brienne’s head long after everyone else was secured inside their bedrolls and she was left to take first watch with another soldier. Robb and Podrick both slept soundly enough, and she rested easier with them both within her view. Duties like this were simple. Securing the survival of her charges. Her body was meant for it. She was strong and she was determined and she didn’t fear injury or death. There was so much to fear, but not that. Not really.

Maiming, maybe. She still marveled at how Jaime had survived what he had. She thought of it often, even as she prodded him to live and keep fighting. She tried to imagine surviving the same. What was she if not her strength? What was she if not her body? She was too ungainly for anything else. Losing her sword hand…that would be the end of her usefulness, and what good would she be then? No man wanted an ugly wife with _both_ hands. She would be worse than a burden on her father. If being a knight as a woman was impossible, being a maester was even more so. A healer? She had no head for that sort of thing. What would a one-handed woman even _do_?

But Jaime had survived. On her urging, he had survived and fought and made it home, and still he served his family and his sister. Useful to them. A tool to carry out the worst of their impulses, perhaps. Brienne wasn’t sure. She never really understood how much Jaime was involved in their maneuvering. He claimed he didn’t have a head for it, the politics and the scheming, but she couldn’t let herself believe him innocent of all of it.

Knowing that the next time they met would likely be on a battlefield, it was far easier to remind herself of the worst of it and not the soft parts that lingered even though she tried to scrub them away.

_He is his sister’s creature. Even now he does her bidding. He will love her always. He has told you so before. He will never love you, and he will never turn his back on her, no matter how many atrocities she commits._

She had used wildfire. She had killed hundreds with the very thing that had caused Jaime to sacrifice his reputation to kill Aerys, and still Jaime had stayed with her.

Brienne would not pretend to mourn the High Sparrow and his gang of acolytes. From the reports that Lady Sansa received and read aloud, their religious zealotry sounded terrifying, and the fact that it had been allowed to gain such a foothold in a city as sinful as Kings Landing was a tragedy in itself. Many relative innocents probably met with terrible punishment, and it would have gotten worse if Cersei hadn’t put a stop to it.

But _putting a stop to it_ should mean laws and armies and peaceful negotiation, or a quick, decisive battle. It did not mean packing the sept with all of her enemies and setting them alight. Pretty Margaery Tyrell, who had always been so kind to Brienne. Her brother Loras, who had loved Renly. Even Jaime’s uncle Kevan, who was the only Lannister aside from Jaime who had ever gone out of his way to be kind to Brienne when she was in Kings Landing. Even Tyrion, Jaime’s beloved brother, had mostly confused her with japes about their height difference and had wondered aloud when she failed to respond if she was simple-minded.

Those people Cersei killed, most of them had not been dangerous to anyone but the queen. The Sparrows had been dangerous, but Cersei had acted to secure her own interests. There was _nothing_ that could make that honorable.

_Innocents, Jaime,_ she would argue if she was there with him. _If it were anyone else..._

Jaime had killed the king for _less_. Aerys had wanted to burn the city and wanted Tywin’s head. Millions of innocents, and Jaime had saved them at the expense of his own honor. How could that boy have justified protecting a monster who had actually carried out a similar plot? On a smaller scale, yes, but it was still horrific. Was love more important than honor? Was _Cersei_ more important? Or perhaps everyone was right. Perhaps it wasn’t that Brienne was the only person to see Ser Jaime clearly. Perhaps she was the only maiden fool enough to fall for it. He had seemed so raw and honest in the bath at Harrenhall, and she had believed him, but…perhaps it had been the threat to his father, after all, that had forced his hand.

_No_ , she thought, recoiling. _No. Everyone else is wrong. Ser Jaime did an honorable thing. He made an honorable choice!_

_Or he wanted you to believe that._

Angrily, she paced around the camp, checking on everyone, peering into the darkness. When she sat again by the fire, the cold had done away with the murkiness of her thoughts.

_No_ , she insisted. Calmer _. I know him. I know he made the choice to save the innocents. I know he did not lie to me._ When she tried to give him back his sword at Riverrun, she had seen the hurt in his expression. He cared for her. He would not lie to her. If it had just been a lark, in the baths, he'd had plenty of time to correct her impression. He never tired of disdaining her view of him as an honorable man; it would have been easy enough to shatter her illusions, if he truly wanted to.

He had been strong once. He wasn’t strong enough anymore. That was the whole of it. His love for Cersei was more important to him than anything, and that was the way it had always been. That didn’t mean he wasn’t capable of honor. It meant only that he wasn’t capable of honor when it came to _her_.

When she dreamt of him that night, it was a fragmented one that she couldn’t remember come morning. His arms were around her. He was speaking into her ear, but she couldn’t make out the sounds. He was comforting her, perhaps. Or she was begging him to stay. She did not know, only held him tighter, pulled him against her until it almost hurt.

_Don’t go_ , she thought, fighting against her instinct to wake when the sunlight began to hit her eyelids. _Please, Jaime, don’t leave me._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Reversing by Takénobu


	21. Sansa V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It only takes two days into their little game for Littlefinger to make his approach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you as always to everyone reading and commenting! I hope you enjoy!
> 
> for those of you hoping for a more detailed plan of Littlefinger's:....I'm sorry but I'm not that author lmao. this is a goof story written by a garbage lady with anxiety, so I have to point out that I am probably not going to deliver any satisfying answers to people looking for that kind of stuff, and also my timeline is whack and my details sketchy, and also YES, it's taking Jaime a long time to come to his senses, but this is a 94 chapter slowburn so that's just where we're at.

Sansa knew that it was dangerous to underestimate Littlefinger, but she _did_ feel some satisfaction at how predictable he was: it only took two days after she and Jon began their playacting at resentment for him to find her alone on the walk above the training yard.

He had this way of appearing out of the shadows that she once thought was mysterious but which she now found tedious, because he was so likely to interrupt her when she wanted to be alone. Today, she was glad for it, because it was what she had been hoping for when she came up here.

Still, without Brienne near, it was _lonely._ Knowing there was no one who could stop him except Sansa herself.

She and Jon hadn’t spoken at all in public for those two days, and they had spoken only rarely in private, not wanting to give the game away accidentally. It was impossible to know who to trust, and _anyone_ who saw them sneak away together might be one of Littlefinger’s spies. Jon put on a convincing air of wounded uncertainty, matched only by her seething anger. Jon skulked and avoided her gaze. She gripped things too tightly. Tore a letter from Robb _accidentally_ , and then looked surprised to do it. It was almost like when they were children, playing pretend. As children it was always Knights and Damsels or something similar. This felt more like Arya’s favorite game, Cat and Mouse, with some slightly altered rules: the goal was not to catch the mouse, but to make the mouse think that _he_ was the cat.

She and Jon had few private conversations, and they were always held in close whispers that sent Sansa’s heart racing. She felt underhanded, forced into a corner in a way she resented. It reminded her of those conversations when she had begged Theon to help her. The threat of Ramsay had been everywhere: in every wall, in every room. Winterfell had not felt like home. It felt like an endless trap that she kept falling into in her desperation to escape.

It was such a bitter thing. They had won back the castle. Ramsay had been defeated. Robb was king. Jon was _staying_. It should have felt like home again, but it couldn’t. Not as long as Littlefinger was still here. 

During one of those conversations, Jon had told her of a moment in the crypts. He told her sheepishly, embarrassed, plainly worried that she would be angry. He told her of Littlefinger’s taunts, and of his reminders that Sansa was a prize to be won and wed by the most worthy man. It was obvious _why_ Littlefinger had done it: he wanted to test Jon’s reaction. He was always doing things like that. It was why Sansa had learned how to make her face into a pretty mask. Littlefinger could read so many things in the tiniest of twitches. Sometimes he even saw correctly.

Jon didn’t have that kind of practice in evading Littlefinger’s tests; he told her of his reaction. The way he shoved Littlefinger against the wall. The way he growled threats in Littlefinger’s face.

Maybe she _should_ have been annoyed. It showed a level of care that she wanted Littlefinger to believe Jon did not have for her. Instead, it made her blood sing in her veins. He’d said all the same pretty things everyone always said about keeping her safe and protecting her. Everyone else had failed, but Jon…

Jon _wanted_ to protect her. It wasn’t the empty courtesy of Littlefinger or the desperate promises of Ser Dontos. Even when he was supposed to be treating her with cold distance, Jon couldn’t help but act on his desire to see her safe.

It succeeded in making Littlefinger more wary, too; he only approached Sansa when Jon left the castle to go hunting with Tormund and a small party of Wildlings. It was ostensibly to try and replenish some of their stores, though Jon had initially suggested it as a way to make Littlefinger let his guard down. Sansa was pleased that it had worked. She wasn’t often glad to have been proven wrong, but she was glad that Jon was more adept at this kind of thing than she had thought he would be.

Littlefinger wasn’t the type to leave things to chance. He wanted to be _sure_ of a good reception, and he knew there was better chance of that if Jon was away. He thought her a girl she had never been. A girl so ambitious she would do horrible things to get herself a throne. Yes, she had wanted to be queen, and yes she had gone along with his plans, but she’d never wanted _power_ the way he thought she did. He thought her coy and sly and smarter than she let on. He thought her adept at hiding her true wants from her brother and cousin. He thought he was the only one who understood her, and he thought that she needed him.

Sansa almost never wanted to think of Cersei, but she wondered for a moment what Cersei would have to say about Lord Baelish. The thought of the queen’s scornful, wine-soaked sneering about his _absurd beard and transparent fawning_ was almost enough to make her smile.

Almost. She kept her face blank from the moment she sensed his presence behind her.

“There have been whispers,” he said in greeting.

“There always are,” she replied. She kept her tone blank, and her eyes facing forward. As always, Littlefinger seemed to take that as permission to move even closer, his mind inventing some signs of encouragement in her closed-off manner.

“You are being cut out again,” he said. “First for a Targaryen, and now for the brother who failed you. I hate to think of how that must make you feel. Let me help you.”

“The lords have chosen Robb,” she said. She truly didn’t have to try to make herself sound dissatisfied with that. She could understand their choice. She had expected their choice. That didn’t mean it didn’t sting to think of it. It hurt when they chose Jon, and it hurt when they chose Robb as well. She still supported them. There were more important things than acknowledgement.

“He stole their sons for a personal crusade and then abandoned them for love,” Littlefinger said. “Perhaps I understand him too well, but the northern lords do not.”

He was really very close now, and she could hear the want in his voice that she hated the most. As useful as it was to her, she feared it. And with Jon and Brienne both gone, it felt more inescapable than ever.

“I know,” she managed to say. She held fast to her cloak by her sides. Her hood was still pulled up. She still wouldn’t look at him.

“This is our chance,” Littlefinger purred. “We will never have a better opportunity than this.”

“What do you propose we do?” Sansa asked.

* * *

When the conversation was at last over, Sansa made some preparations, and then she went back to her rooms. She had managed to stall Littlefinger by asking for more assurances, more proof of success before she moved against her brother and her cousin, but now at least she had some idea of his plan to win the support of the northern lords. He hadn’t given her much, and she knew that at least some of what he had given her was a test. He wasn’t entirely sure that her move with the Blackfish _was_ a move. Littlefinger rarely did things for one reason. It was far more likely that he was doing them for two or three. So he wanted Sansa’s support, yes, and he wanted her to trust him. He also wanted to know if she was on his side. If the lords he had named as his allies were suddenly sent back home or assigned to urgent diplomatic missions that took them away from Winterfell, he would have his answer.

So she couldn’t send them away, but she could have them watched, and she could try to work on them. Littlefinger’s allies were never very loyal ones, because he usually managed to cast himself as the best of several bad options. She would simply have to make herself a better one. Some of the names, she gave to Lord Royce, who promised to see it handled. _Him_ , she trusted to be discreet. They had spoken of the situation several times recently, and he was aware of how treacherous Littlefinger was. He was well respected even in the north, too, and a few words from him might be enough to win back the support from some of the lords Littlefinger had named.

The more questionable of his allies, Sansa gave to Lyanna Mormont, who eagerly promised to shame some more grown men when the opportunity arose. Some, Sansa wrote into a letter and sent immediately to her uncle the Blackfish, sending the raven herself when she was sure Littlefinger had gone to the hall and would not be watching. She did not tell the whole list of names to any of her three chosen allies, though she would tell them to Jon, later, when he returned. It was better to keep them split up.

Ghost had appeared as soon as Littlefinger left her, and he followed her wherever she went. It was a comfort to reach down and feel him padding beside her as she went about her day. He seemed to have a sense for when she was distressed, and he always made sure to be near.

“I still say you would have been more useful hunting,” she said, pretending at annoyance, but when she closed and locked the door of her room behind her, she went to the fire and knelt there, and she put her arms around Ghost’s neck, and she hugged him.

She could not show her fear or her weaknesses to anyone. Not Brienne. Not Jon. Not Robb. But she could show them to Ghost; Ghost would not think less of her.

Sometimes she wondered if things would have been different if Lady had not been killed. The Lannisters likely would have killed her eventually. When they arrested her father and locked her in her rooms, perhaps. Lady was good, and well behaved, but she was still a direwolf, and she would have done anything to protect Sansa. She would have attacked the guards, and then she would have died.

It was nice to think about, though. Lady beside her. Watching over her.

“Jon was lucky to have you,” she decided.

Lucky, too, that the men who killed him had been too afraid of Ghost to do the same, unlike the men who tried to kill Robb.

 _We are all that’s left_ , she thought. She didn’t know that for sure, but she told it to herself often. Reminding herself not to think of Arya surviving out there on her own, or Bran traveling somewhere in the north. Hiding and surviving. It would be too easy to hope, and she was sure that allowing that hope and then seeing it dashed would break her. _We are all that’s left, and I will protect what’s mine. My family._

Outside, on the walk, when Littlefinger had spoken of Robb’s failures and Jon’s Targaryen heritage, he did his best to distance her from them. He reminded her that Robb had chosen not to save her. He reminded her that Jon had not listened to her before the battle and nearly lost the war in his haste to save Rickon. _You are the only true Stark left who cares for your house’s honor_ , he had said. _The lords will follow you if I tell them to. There is a queen in Westeros. Why not a queen in the north?_

Not that Cersei was a very good example of a queen, but it was a good angle to play. Sansa sometimes imagined it. The crown upon her head. Her lords and ladies cheering for her. Shouting _queen in the north_ in the same way they had chanted for Jon when they named him king. It was a pretty picture, but not a very clear one. Would she feel safe as queen? Or would there only be more to lose?

She used to want to be queen more than anything else in the world, but now she could hardly remember why. She had seen Cersei for the first time and thought her hopelessly beautiful. It almost hurt to look at her, to see the fine dress she wore and the elaborate hairstyle that looked like nothing Sansa had ever seen. When she complimented Sansa’s dress, Sansa floated for _hours_ on that feeling.

Cersei was easy to hate now, particularly when Sansa remembered how afraid she had been in Kings Landing. But Cersei was easy to pity, too. Sansa had seen how displeased the queen was with her king. She saw how Cersei’s words meant nothing compared to what Robert wanted. She saw the thanklessness of ruling in the exhausted slope of her father’s shoulders. She saw the thanklessness of loyalty in the way Barristan Selmy was so carelessly dismissed after serving for years and years to protect the kings. She had been a child, then, with no real understanding of what it meant to rule. But now she knew it better. Now she knew what ruling meant.

As a child, she wanted to be queen because the queens were the ones in stories who were remembered. The queens and the warrior maids, and Sansa had no desire to be like Brienne or Arya. She didn’t have the talent for it, either. If she tried to fight, she would look ridiculous. No, it was queendom and motherhood for her. That was what she had wanted.

Now, she wondered why _anyone_ would want to rule. She loved her position in Winterfell. She loved her people. They were still an exhausting lot, and they were only one kingdom. If you wanted to be a good ruler…

Well. Maybe that was the problem.

People like Littlefinger and Cersei, she wondered if they ever even asked themselves why. _She_ certainly never had when it was something she wanted. As a girl, it would have been because of the songs, and when she was older it would have been because she thought it would keep her safe, but she knew better now, and she wasn’t nearly as old as either of them. Surely they must have asked themselves at some point why they wanted to rule so badly. Surely they must have asked themselves if it was worth it.

Could it really be so simple as a thirst for power? Did that thirst override all sense? She wished she could ask Littlefinger, but he would never answer her honestly. He would monologue at her for a bit about something he thought was quite clever, but he’d never tell her the truth of it.

When at last she felt calm enough, stroking Ghost’s fur through the worst of the welling panic until she was able to force it down again, Sansa rose to her feet. There was still so much to do. She would have to inform Jon about the Littlefinger conversation. She wanted to take a tour of the glass gardens before dinner so she could see how everything was growing and hopefully bolster the spirits of the workers. She wanted to take a bath. She wanted a _nap_.

She sat down at her desk and unlocked the inner drawer with the key she carried on a chain around her neck. There was a half-written letter to Brienne in there that she hadn’t yet finished, and there was one to Jaime Lannister as well. She had burned his last letter immediately after reading it, and she had been unsure how to respond, though she knew she should.

She was certain now that his sister didn’t have a hand in this correspondence. She had already begun to doubt, but the advice he offered in the last one…Sansa already knew Littlefinger to be a false friend, but Cersei would think her too stupid to see anything but an older man offering advice that Sansa would of course need. Cersei would delight in leaving Littlefinger to do his worst, and she would hope that Sansa would fall in the chaos that Littlefinger would be sure to bring.

Sansa smiled as she remembered Jaime’s words. They hadn’t been very subtle, but he’d _tried_ at subtlety. And there had been an open inquiry about Brienne, which he usually avoided writing, preferring to talk in circles around it. It was almost sweet, that he was so eager for news.

Sansa knew she could not count on Jaime Lannister for anything where his sister was concerned, but it was good to think she had _some_ level of friendship with the man. Their houses may have been enemies, but he had proven himself by warning of Littlefinger, and Sansa trusted Brienne’s judgement even if it seemed Brienne had begun to doubt her own. His letters had grown more personal, as well. Often he mocked himself in them more than he mocked her, though there was a sarcastic element to everything he wrote that reminded her of Tyrion when he was talking to the rest of his family. Not so bitter as Tyrion, maybe. But with an element of irony, especially when he wrote of the bad blood that existed between Lannister and Stark.

 _He doesn’t like this any more than I do_ , she told herself as she wrote. _He wishes things could be different._

She wasn’t a foolish little girl anymore, given to fanciful notions. She’d swooned over the idea of knights and romance, but the truth of it was much worse. The Hound had scorned the idea of true knighthood, and perhaps he was right. Still. There was something so romantic about the way Jaime Lannister wrote of Brienne. He hid his yearning behind biting words and deflections, but she could read it, and she could know it.

If his sister was so easy to hate, then Jaime Lannister was perhaps as difficult. Sansa often found herself nearly laughing as she read his letters, such as the response he sent to the one _she_ wrote questioning his strategy in jumping into a bear pit without a weapon. She would write to him regardless because she would not want to fail to take advantage of such a connection, but she was actually enjoying their correspondence. _Truly, you are a genius of strategy_ , he had written in sarcastic reply to her mocking. _No one_ spoke to her that way. Not deferring to her with courtly politeness, but not cruel, either. He spoke to her as an equal. Not as a little sister to protect. Not as a lady he was sworn to. And not as a pretty, empty-headed idiot. Despite the years he had on her, Jaime Lannister spoke to her in their letters with the kind of teasing camaraderie that Jon used to have with Arya, or Robb with Theon, or either of the boys to Bran and Rickon. She was not some delicate damsel to be tiptoed around. She wasn’t his enemy any longer. She was simply _Sansa_. She had not been allowed to be only herself in such a long time, and she needed it now more than ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Everdream by Epic Soul Factory, Cesc Vilà, and Fran Soto
> 
> the show: oooo is sansa going to betray her family? how does she feel about littlefinger???? does she want to be queen??? this is so mysterious  
> this story: sansa thinks littlefinger is GROSS and SO DO I


	22. Arya I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya returns to Winterfell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to everyone reading and commenting! I'm going through and replying to comments now, but consider this a blanket thank you!!!

There were refugees pouring into Wintertown, pulling their carts and carriages off the road, but many of them continued on to the castle. That was good; Arya could use them to blend in on her approach.

She’d grown a lot since she was last at Winterfell, but not so much that she couldn’t pass for a child following along with her family’s wagon, and that was exactly what she did. The farmer who was driving the cart didn’t even spare her a look. That was good too. Arya liked to make friends with the people she traveled with, but she wanted to be alone for this.

She had expected more, honestly. Some big, important moment, seeing the castle for the first time in so long. Maybe she was just tired from the road. She’d done a lot of walking since she left the bodies of all those Frey men cooling in their chairs.

Or maybe it just didn’t feel like coming home quite yet because the castle looked so different from how she remembered it. She never knew it quite as well as Bran, who was always showing her new passages and secret tunnels he had discovered. They were just servant tunnels, really, but they hadn’t known that then, and they’d played at being spies, quiet and trying not to giggle and trying not to sneeze as their running footsteps kicked up dust in the old passageways. She always asked how Bran knew where he was going, and he would only shrug and lead her deeper, and she would follow, because she didn’t want him to say she was scared, even though she _was_ , a bit, of those small narrow spaces. She never knew it quite as well as him, but she knew it well enough, and she could see now where some walls had been damaged. The gate was obviously made from fresh-cut wood, not yet aged and spotted like the old one. There was some stone that _looked_ new, contrasted against the stones that had been there for years and years. Some of the walls had been rebuilt already, but there was a lot of work yet to do. Arya was almost afraid to go inside.

She knew she should be glad it was still standing at all. After all the wars and all the fighting, it was Sansa and Jon who ruled it now, and Arya was surprised their cold silences hadn’t just turned everything to ice. She couldn’t imagine the two of them agreeing on anything, but clearly they had, if things were already starting to be fixed.

She was only sorry she’d missed Robb. She’d heard so many rumors as she traveled, but she hadn’t believed them until she got up north and heard northmen talking about it. They weren’t the type to listen to idle gossip, and a few of them had _seen_ him.

 _I saw him too_ , she had wanted to say. _With a wolf’s head._ But she didn’t, because she wanted to hope, and then she wanted to believe. But by the time she got up close, the stories were saying that Robb had already left to travel to Dragonstone. A widow Arya had walked with a little ways was telling her all about the trip King Robb was taking to see the dragon queen. If only she had been a bit faster, maybe she could have gone with him.

Though now that she was back within the walls of Winterfell, she wasn’t sure she would have wanted to. She had been away for so long. She had forgotten how it felt to be in a place that was _home_. There had been places over the years since she left that she felt safe. Places where she felt welcome. They weren’t the same as this. She breathed in the air. It tasted of the snow that would fall later in the evening. The clouds were gathered overhead, and the farmers and the stonemasons grumbled about the turn in the weather, but Arya Stark breathed it all in, and she remembered, and she was herself again. Even more herself than she had been before. 

She laughed, and the farmers and stonemasons probably thought her mad. Let them. She wasn’t mad at all.

A snow-white shape bounded out of the gate that led to the godswood, and Arya had only enough time to drop to one knee before Ghost was upon her, wagging his tail and licking at her face. She giggled happily, and she threw her arms around his great furry body, and she closed her eyes.

She was home.

* * *

She followed Ghost to the godswood, knowing that he would lead her to Jon. She remembered all those times she and Bran lurked around in the passages. Bran would cause some kind of commotion in the hall to distract the septa and help Arya escape her lessons, and then the two of them would spend the rest of day playing _Disappear_ , a game that basically involved avoiding any adults or older siblings as long as possible so they wouldn’t have to go back to stupid learning.

Except _Disappear_ had an _Exception_ rule: if sneaking around meant that they had a chance to scare someone, they always took it, even if it meant getting caught. Sneaking up on their siblings and jumping out at them, or knocking over something when someone thought they were alone. The household hated them. Their parents despaired of them. Their siblings screeched after them.

She crept along after Ghost, both of them near-silent through the trees, aided by all the snow on the ground. Maybe she was imagining the mischievous creeping gait that Ghost adopted, like a stalking predator, but she didn’t think so. Ghost knew how to play.

Arya was ready to play too. Or she thought she was. But she drew up short when she actually _saw_ him.

She hadn’t thought…she knew that it would be good to see her brother again, but to actually _see_ him. She hadn’t thought this far. She hadn’t thought about what he would look like. Snug in a fur coat. He looked almost like father. Darker hair. Longer hair. Curly, too. But he was wearing it pulled back the way father used to, and father always used to stand at the heart tree and pray, just like Jon was doing. He looked…he was father come again.

Ghost turned and looked back at her, wagging his tail, and Arya closed her eyes. She allowed herself several moments to feel it. Drink it in. _Home. I’m home. I am with them again._

She opened her eyes. She dropped back down into her crouch, and she crept up behind him, drawing Needle from its sheath.

Ghost whined.

Jon turned, and Arya glared at his direwolf. _I wasn’t going to hurt him, you stupid dog_ , she thought. So much for being as clever as a person. A person would know what a prank looked like. _Nymeria would have known._

But her anger melted, because Jon turned more fully when he saw her, and his guarded expression fell open, and she saw him go instantly from the man he had become to the boy she remembered him being.

She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t. She was Arya Stark of Winterfell, and she wouldn’t cry.

She launched herself up into his arms, dropping Needle into the snow, and Jon caught her just like she knew he would. He hugged her tight, crushing her against him. He hadn’t gotten so tall, but he was still taller than her. Big enough to spin her around as he hugged her. He was laughing, but it was thick, choked with tears, and she knew that he was crying, too.

“I was trying to scare you,” she finally said. Her voice wavered only a little. “But Ghost didn’t think it was so funny.”

“Good boy,” Jon said. His voice wavered a lot. He set her down at last, and he looked at her. His hands were still on her shoulders, like he was afraid to let her go. “You’re here.”

“I thought that was obvious,” Arya said, and Jon laughed at her. He looked more tired that she remembered. There were dark circles under his eyes, and a furrow in his brow that looked permanent. She wanted to make him smile again. “I thought you’d be taller by now.”

“Aye,” Jon laughed. “Me too. I thought you’d have grown as tall as Sansa.”

“Has she gotten even taller, then?” Arya sighed. Of _course_ Sansa was tall. She’d probably gotten even prettier, too. It would be so like her. 

“She’s taller than me,” Jon admitted. “You haven’t seen her yet?”

“Ghost led me straight here. I just arrived.”

“Gods, look at you,” Jon said. His smile was growing, like the shock was wearing off and reality was setting in.

“And,” Arya said, bending down to pull Needle out of the snow, giving Ghost one more little glare for good measure while her back was turned to Jon. She turned back to brandish the sword, and Jon laughed happily. She didn’t remember him ever laughing so hard when they were children, but maybe she just forgot. She found that she had forgotten a lot of things that she was only now remembering, now that she was back here.

“You still have it,” he said, taking it to look at it. “In good condition, too.”

“We’ve been parted a few times, but not for long,” Arya said, breezily, as if it was nothing. Jon handed it back to her, and she tucked it back at her side, where it belonged. “It was always there to…remind me. Of who I really was. Of my family.”

Jon smiled, but there was something wrong behind his eyes. Arya didn’t want to know that it was there. She wanted to be herself, Arya Stark. She didn’t want to be No One. She wanted to forget No One completely and the things that No One had learned. But she couldn’t. That was in her now, too.

“What is it?” she asked. Jon gestured her closer so that they could sit together on the stone beside the pool that their father always used to sit on.

“There’s something I should tell you,” he said. “You’re going to find out anyway. It’s all anyone talks about lately. That’s why I’m out here, actually. Get a break from it. I know it’s going to be difficult to hear, but…”

“Jon,” Arya said, alarmed. “Just say it. I don’t need a whole _introduction_.”

Jon smiled a bit wider, though it was strained and a bit sad and a bit hard to look at.

“I’m not your brother,” he said. Arya’s brain rejected that notion immediately. “I’m your cousin. Robb spoke to Howland Reed. He was father’s… _your_ father’s friend.”

“He was your father too,” Arya insisted. Jon’s smile had fully faded by now.

“He wasn’t,” Jon said. “Not…not at first. I was born of your aunt Lyanna and Rhaegar Targaryen.”

Arya stood up. She faced him, her arms folded across her chest. She considered him. He wasn’t lying. She could tell that immediately. He wouldn’t, anyway. This wasn’t the type of prank he would play.

“Well, fine,” she said. “But you’re still my brother.”

Jon laughed again, but it was quieter this time. Less mirthful. More…relieved, maybe.

“I should have known that’s how you would react,” he said, and Arya arched one eyebrow in the way she remembered her mother used to do.

“You should have,” she agreed. “What else is there to say?” Jon hesitated, and she zeroed in on it. She couldn’t help it. “What?” she asked. “Is it Sansa?”

Jon was plainly alarmed by that, and he forgot to try and hide his emotions.

“What? What about Sansa?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I figured that’s why you looked so grim.” She didn’t _want_ to mention the fact that Sansa always called him _half-brother_ and never let anyone forget that he was a bastard, hiding behind all those lady courtesies she was so obsessed with, not realizing that Jon was the best person in the whole world. She figured that would be rude to remind him about. It wasn’t like he wouldn’t remember, anyway.

“I always look grim,” he said. She shook her head.

“No,” she said fondly. “Not always.”

“There’s…a lot involved,” Jon said slowly. “The north isn’t happy. I thought I should leave, but…”

“This is your home,” Arya said, before she could stop herself. “You shouldn’t have to leave if you don’t want to.”

“That’s what Sansa said. And Robb. They convinced me to stay.”

Again the oddness at the mention of Sansa. Softer than Arya was expecting. Maybe she had to re-evaluate what it had been like for the two of them. It couldn’t have been easy, and maybe even Sansa saw Jon’s worth after a while.

“Good,” she said. “If you had left, I would have had to go after you, and I’ve already come quite a long way.”

“I can’t wait to hear about it,” Jon said. He hugged her again, and Arya allowed herself to sink into it.

 _He’s still my brother_ , she thought, satisfied. _That hasn’t changed. The rest of it doesn’t matter. I’m not exactly the same person I was before, either. I don’t need him to be anything but Jon._

* * *

Arya wasn’t afraid, exactly, to see Sansa again. She’d felt fear lots of different times, in lots of different ways, and she knew that this wasn’t it. It was just…wariness. She didn’t know what would happen.

She was so happy to be home. She didn’t want Sansa to ruin it by being the same as before. Everything Arya did had been wrong. Everything she said had been stupid. Everything had been childish or silly or annoying.

She wanted to yell at Sansa for not saying anything about Joffrey when everyone asked her what happened by the water that day, and she wanted to say she was sorry for getting Lady killed, and she wanted to yell at her about standing up there with the queen and everyone and being too stupid to realize that Joffrey wasn’t going to be merciful with father, and she wanted to apologize for leaving Kings Landing without trying to get her out.

She hadn’t heard everything, she knew. There were so many stories, and a lot of them sounded silly and a lot of them she _knew_ weren’t true. But some of them _had_ to be, surely. And the things those stories said about Sansa, about what she had been through…

Would Sansa be angry? Or would Sansa _make_ her angry? Or would Sansa be willing to just…forget? Now that Arya was back.

She didn’t know. Her feet dragged as she walked up to the rooms where Jon said Sansa would be. She’d put it off as long as she could, staying out in the godswood and talking to Jon, but he’d eventually convinced her to go.

Sansa’s rooms had been their mother’s rooms before, though Catelyn had scarcely used them. Arya could remember after Rickon was born. Sansa had already been lying in the bed next to their mother, curled up beside her, petting Rickon’s head. Arya had been too scared to get close until Sansa waved her closer. She’d gotten all soft and mushy about the baby, and it made her soft and mushy about Arya, too. She’d pulled Arya in, wrapped her arm around her, and Arya had snuggled up with the three of them.

There was a lump in her throat when she finally raised her fist to knock on Sansa’s door.

She wasn’t much used to knocking anymore. But Jon had said not to startle Sansa, and there had been something warning in his expression. Arya knew that he wasn’t just saying it because it wasn’t polite. There was something sadder, there, and it reminded Arya of the worst stories she’d heard when she was traveling.

“Yes?” came Sansa’s voice. Arya had almost been worried that she would sound _too_ different. Or, worse, that she would sound like their mother. But she didn’t. Just one word, and Arya knew she was still Sansa. No matter what had happened to her, no matter how much she had changed. She was still Sansa, and Arya was still Arya, and Jon was still Jon.

She opened the door, and Sansa turned from where she was sitting at the desk. Her eyes widened first. Arya saw the way they swept over her whole body, like she wasn’t sure what she was seeing.

“Arya,” she breathed.

Then she was standing in haste, and she was crossing the room. She _had_ gotten even taller, and even prettier than she was as a girl. She was wearing a dark blue dress that looked like something their mother might have worn, except there were wolves embroidered on the collar. Sansa had always been good at embroidery.

Arya realized that she was just standing there like a fool, smiling up at her sister, and Sansa faltered to a stop, and she had her hands clutched together in front of her body.

Sansa was nervous too.

Arya laughed. She couldn’t help it. The fact that they were both so nervous to see each other again. That they were both convinced that something bad was going to happen. What were they so worried about? They were _sisters_.

Sansa laughed too, giddy and breathless. Arya closed the gap between them, and she flung her arms around her sister’s middle, hugging her tight. Sansa’s arms wrapped around her. She had always given good hugs, Sansa. Arya had prized them all the more for how infrequently she had received them.

“You’re home,” Sansa said, and Arya nodded against Sansa’s chest.

“I am,” she said. “Finally.”

Sansa’s lips were in her hair, and Arya could have cried, but she didn’t. She only smiled, and she closed her eyes, and they stood there for quite a while.

* * *

Sansa had some wine brought up, and they sat by the fire and talked. Arya didn’t tell Sansa very much, not wanting to upset her, but then wished that she had said more when Sansa told her own story. Sansa looked nervous a few times, like she wasn’t sure how Arya would react, but she didn’t hold anything back.

“I killed the Freys,” Arya said, after Sansa’s voice had trailed off, small and nervous when she revealed that she had fed Ramsay Bolton to his dogs. Sansa met Arya’s eyes, her own widening. “I killed that nasty old man, and I killed his sons. They deserved it.”

Sansa nodded. She didn’t hesitate. Arya wondered if she was scared.

“They killed mother,” Sansa said.

“They tried to kill Robb. And they killed Robb’s wife. We never even got to meet her.”

“And her babe,” Sansa said miserably.

“They were going to be rewarded. Him and all his sons. Their family name continuing while ours died. The world isn’t fair when things like that happen.”

“The world _isn’t_ fair. Things like that happen all the time.”

“Yes they do. But not that day.”

Sansa smiled a little, and no, it wasn’t fear at all. It was admiration in Sansa’s gaze.

“Not that day,” she repeated quietly.

“I learned a lot when I was away,” Arya said. “I learned how to kill a man. You don’t seem surprised.”

“I’m not. I knew that if you’d survived, you would have had to fight for it.”

“I didn’t even make it out of the city without…there was a boy. He tried to turn me in. I was so scared. I just…I stuck him with Needle. He bled and died there, on the floor of the stables.”

“Good,” Sansa insisted, reaching for Arya’s hand across the table. She held on tight, her eyes big and blue and filled with emotion that she was plainly used to hiding. “I’m so glad you’re alive, Arya. I’m _so_ glad.”

“I’m glad you fed that monster to his dogs.”

“I am too.”

“You shouldn’t feel bad about it.”

“I don’t.”

“Yes you do.”

Sansa looked at Arya curiously, and Arya looked into the fire. She didn’t want to scare her sister. She didn’t want to make her sister uncomfortable. But she wanted Sansa to know.

“I learned a lot of things,” she said. “How to change faces. How to tell if someone’s lying.”

“Change _faces_?” Sansa asked. Arya shook her head.

“I won’t do it unless I need to. But I was with the Faceless Men, in Braavos. They taught me. And they taught me the Game of Faces.”

“That sounds…” Sansa started, but didn’t finish. She took another sip of wine. She was trying to be polite. Arya smiled at her. A little of the old Sansa, for just a second. It was odd that it could be a relief.

“I’ll show you,” she said. _What are you doing_? she wondered at herself. “Do you want to take the crown from Robb?”

Sansa didn’t choke on her wine. She didn’t react in quite such a dramatic way. But she stared, frozen, her wine glass only halfway from her lips. She swallowed and put the cup down. She faced Arya warily. _Don’t be afraid,_ Arya wanted to say, but she didn’t. Maybe Sansa _should_ be afraid. It depended on her answer.

“No,” Sansa said. “I used to think I did. I only want us to all be safe. Together. Home. I want us to be a family again.”

Arya smiled.

“Me too,” she said. Sansa wasn’t lying. “Were you jealous when they made Jon and Robb king instead of you?”

Sansa sighed.

“Yes,” she said. She wasn’t lying then, either.

“Even though you don’t want to be queen?” Arya asked. Sansa shrugged.

“You asked. I told you the truth,” she said. She was settling now, trusting Arya more. It made Arya’s chest hurt for some reason.

“Sometimes people don’t make sense,” Arya allowed. “Do you and Jon get along now?”

“Most of the time,” Sansa said. She was smiling. She seemed to think that the questions were over, or that they were normal questions. Her guard was down. Arya didn’t want to see it as an exploitable weakness, but it was.

“Were you glad when you found out that Jon’s our cousin?”

Sansa froze again. The trust was gone again. Arya’s chest hurt even more now. Why had she asked? She should have assumed the answer. She shouldn’t have asked. It made everything worse.

“No,” Sansa whispered.

“You’re lying,” Arya replied. There was a piece of her that loved it. A piece that was still that little girl who saw Sansa praised for _everything_ even when she was the one being mean. Just because she did what the adults told her to do and never wanted anything else, everyone said how good she was. No one would have ever accused Sansa of lying when they were girls, and it was sweet now to _know_ that she was. But there was a bigger part of Arya that felt sick. That wasn’t them anymore. Why was she doing this?

“I’m not. It was awful for Jon.”

“But you were still glad.”

“Arya, please.” Sansa’s eyes were wider now. She had this panicked look. Arya could see it in the way her mask had fractured and her lips were trembling as she pushed them together and breathed out through her nose. Like a frightened horse. That was what she looked like.

_She’s not a horse. She’s my sister._

“He was never your brother, was he?”

“Yes, he was,” Sansa said. She wasn’t lying. Or not really. There was a trembling there, something just on the edge of falseness. If she was playing the game for real, Arya would ask for more. Press onward.

_But this isn’t for real. You don’t need to ask her anymore questions. You’re scaring her._

“But is he still your brother now?”

Sansa stood up. She walked to the window. She had her hands clasped together again, the way she had when she didn’t know how Arya would greet her. She had slumped a bit, before, but now her posture was back to being completely correct.

“If you can tell when people are lying, I may need your help,” she said.

“I asked you a question.”

“A horrible question, with an answer I can’t give you.”

“Because the answer is no. You _still_ hate Jon. After everything.”

Sansa’s expression was too open to miss, then. Incredulous. Confused.

“I don’t hate Jon,” she said, and she wasn’t lying. Her eyes were on Arya’s face. Arya couldn’t understand. Sansa was waiting for her to understand with a look like she was expecting to be hit. “Please,” she said. “Don’t tell him.”

“I don’t understand,” Arya said.

“It was Cersei,” Sansa said, turning away, looking back at the window. Her arms were wrapped around her middle now, keeping her safe. “It had to be Cersei. I was too long around her, and some of her seeped into me like a disease. Or it broke me. Or maybe it was Ramsay that did that.”

“I don’t understand,” Arya said again, louder. She felt like a child throwing a tantrum, and maybe she was, but it was just…it was _Jon_ , and it was _Sansa_. But she wasn’t lying. She wasn’t lying. She thought she was sick and wrong and hateful and broken. She thought Cersei had poinsoned her. She wasn’t lying about that at all.

“You think I _do_?” Sansa asked. Her expression went very nearly blank, and she closed her eyes and shook her head. She looked disgusted with herself. She looked confused, too. “Please, Arya. I’m begging you. Please. Don’t tell him.”

Arya nodded. She wouldn’t. Jon would never believe her if she did, anyway, and Sansa looked so afraid. Arya hadn’t meant to scare her. She just wanted to know if Sansa still hated Jon. She just wanted to know.

 _You wanted the answer to be yes_ , she reminded herself. Sick with the knowledge that she had pushed too far. _You wanted to be the only one who loved Jon, still. Now there’s_ this _. Why did you have to ask her?_

She didn’t know how to put the knowledge where it belonged inside her. She knew it was true. She knew Sansa hated herself for it. She knew that her sister was close to tears. She knew that _she_ had done this. She had scared Sansa, made her fear that Arya would tell someone, or maybe made her fear that Arya would hate her for it.

“You said you needed my help,” she said, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say. “What can I do?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Watching the Storm by U137
> 
> also do NOT worry: that's the last time Arya will be playing the game of faces with Sansa. This is a No Winterhell Plotline safe zone, and that's a promise.


	23. Robb IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robb meets Daenerys at Dragonstone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to everyone reading and commenting! I'm going through and replying individually to the comments from last chapter tonight, but i wanted to get this one up so I could also post tomorrow!

Being at home had helped Robb return to himself. He had dreaded being crowned again, but knowing that he had a responsibility to his people helped him stay more focused than he had been since the wedding. Sansa and Jon kept him present, and they gave him a purpose, and his weariness faded as the weeks passed. He’d been worried that leaving them would send him spiraling again, but it hadn’t. It was easy to remember himself when he looked at Brienne. When he spoke with her, when he sparred with her, when he rode next to her and shared stories with her. He was _himself_ again, wholly. 

Brienne was a natural fighter, but she was a well-trained one, too. She told him stories about Ser Goodwin, the man who taught her everything. Goodwin had ignored the people who said he shouldn’t teach the heiress of Tarth how to be _more_ like a man. It was easy to imagine Brienne as a child. She was tall even then, she said, and that was easy to imagine, too. A tall, awkward child who knew already that she would make a better Warrior than a Maiden.

“I wish you’d have been raised in Winterfell,” he found himself saying one day, and she seemed startled by the idea.

“Why?” she asked.

“We could have trained together,” he said. She laughed. She’d gotten more casual with him, in the sense that she only called him _your grace_ half as much as she used to. But her laughter was still rare enough that it startled a smile out of him every time. Then she faltered.

“You’re serious,” she said.

“Of course I am! Jon and I would have loved it.”

Theon too, though Theon would have said enough cruel things about Brienne’s looks that it might have been a mess. Best not to think about Theon, anyway.

“Your mother never would have allowed it,” Brienne said.

“She accepted you as her sworn sword, didn’t she?” Robb asked.

“Yes, but I was already ruined then,” Brienne said grimly, as if it was obvious. It made Robb laugh, though it also made him a bit sad for her, for Brienne as a child.

“Do you really believe that?” he asked. She shrugged one shoulder, a sort of girlish gesture that looked odd on her frame, but made Robb think of Sansa.

“My septa certainly thought so. She never approved of anything I did.”

“Mm. Arya was the same. She was constantly getting in trouble. She hated all the lessons and the rules and the embroidery and whatever else ladies fill their time with.”

“I didn’t hate that stuff at all,” Brienne remembered with a quiet laugh. “I tried my hardest. I was just never very good at any of it. I was too clumsy. My fingers were too big. Everything I tried, I did wrong. She hated me for it.”

“Well, Septa Mordane would have been a bit more patient,” Robb insisted. “As long as you were trying.” He wasn’t sure if that was true, but it seemed encouraging, and liked the idea of Brienne growing up around Winterfell. Sparring with he and Jon. Teaching Arya when Arya was big enough. Catelyn had adored and pitied and been fascinated by Brienne, he remembered, and he knew that she would have welcomed the chance for such a ward.

“It’s a pleasant idea,” Brienne allowed with a small smile. “Maybe you’d be a better fighter if I had.”

He laughed at her then, and he picked up his blunted sword again. Some of his men were watching, pretending not to be amused as he flourished his blade. He had never felt so alive since he had been brought back from the drink of death. He pointed his sword in Brienne’s direction.

“All right, come on,” he said. “Beat some more sense into me. I’ll never improve if you don’t.”

She did, quite handily, and afterward they sat beside each other on a shared log and passed a waterskin between them. Brienne was looking thoughtfully across the fire at Podrick, who was chatting with a few other squires.

“He’s a good lad,” Robb said.

“He is,” Brienne agreed. “I wonder if I should have left him at Winterfell.”

“He would have hated that,” Robb pointed out, and Brienne hummed in agreement.

“We don’t know what we’re walking into,” she said. She looked directly at him as she said it. She had gotten better at that since they’d started on the road from Winterfell, and he was glad for it, even if it also meant it was easier for her to question him.

“No,” he agreed. “Do you wish I’d left _you_ in Winterfell?”

Brienne considered. She still didn’t look away.

“No,” she said, thoughtful, as if she was surprised. Robb grinned at her.

“Good,” he said. “Me neither.”

* * *

The first time Robb saw Daenerys Targaryen, he thought of Talisa.

It wasn’t that they looked at all alike, and it wasn’t that Daenerys reminded him of Talisa in any way. He entered the throne room on Dragonstone, and a pretty woman who stood at the bottom of the dais began to list off the dragon queen’s titles, and Robb thought of the first time he met his future wife. She had been covered in blood, exhausted and overworked, and he had never seen anybody more beautiful.

Daenerys Targaryen was beautiful too. She sat on the throne with a cool, detached grace that was regal. Queenly. A strong first impression. It was also remote. Impossible to reach. She towered above he and Davos and even Brienne. Robb looked up at her and thought of Cersei’s cold courtesies to he and his family when she visited Winterfell for the first and last time.

 _Talisa should have been queen for longer than she was_ , he thought. _Talisa would have been warm._

But Talisa was dead, and this was the queen he was expected to kneel to. He watched her as Davos stumblingly made his own introductions. Daenerys smiled with poorly disguised mirth to hear them, and whether it was that Davos was so unpolished or that Robb’s list of titles was so small compared to her own, it didn’t do her any favors. Talisa would have...

_Stop. Talisa is dead. It doesn’t matter that she would have smiled with encouragement and nodded for Davos to go on. It doesn’t matter that she wouldn’t have needed to raise herself up to proclaim herself queen. It doesn’t matter that she would have laughed and waved off any attempts at giving her titles. Talisa is dead. Daenerys is the one you have to deal with._

After Davos spoke, there was a silence that stretched. Daenerys waited. Her smile was small, plastered-on. Expectant. Fine. He would speak first, if that was what she wanted.

“The north is no longer a part of Westeros,” he said. He heard Brienne breathing in sharply behind him, preparing for a reaction that Robb hoped not to receive. “We declared our independence during the reign of Joffrey Baratheon, and we mean to keep that independence. I will gladly support your claim as the rightful queen of Westeros, but I will not bend the knee or cede the north to your rule.”

His words echoed in the cavernous throne room. Dark and unwelcoming and a stark reminder of what had happened to the last members of his family to stand against a Targaryen monarch. He remembered when he felt like a child in his father’s cloak, trying to deliver speeches before battles, or trying to wrangle his arguing lieutenants as they planned their next attack. All of the men would look down at him, and some of them grumbled and some of them resented him, but all of them listened, though he felt no bigger than little Lyanna Mormont.

He didn’t feel small anymore. He didn’t feel so young, either, though he knew Davos and even occasionally Brienne looked at him as though he was. He felt like a king for once, standing before her. This dragon queen was young, too.

Young and _offended_. She arched her eyebrows prettily and turned to look at Tyrion Lannister, who wore his golden Hand of the Queen pin proudly. He had greeted Robb earlier at the docks, and tried to make conversation about their families until he recognized the danger in Robb’s expression when he strayed too close to the topic of his marriage to Sansa.

Robb had been determined to be blank, and kind, and courteous, but arriving on Dragonstone had done away with that plan. He had been so obviously surrounded by his family’s enemies. It must have been by design, meant to intimidate the fool northern king. It seemed like something Tyrion would do. Ironborn ships patrolled the coast, though Tyrion had mentioned that Theon and his sister were both engaged in taking back Pyke. There was Tyrion himself, of course. And Varys, who used to serve Robert Baratheon, and had shifted loyalties. There were soldiers wearing the rose of Highgarden. They had been enemies, too, fighting for more than one of Robb’s foes. They had all been stationed along the walk from the dock to the throne room. Reminders that it would be a difficult war, if Robb refused to cooperate.

There were no more Freys, and there were no more Boltons. And it was _something_ that he didn’t have to see the Lannister lion draped on any tent pavilions. Only one lion, greatly diminished, standing now looking at his queen with what looked like real fear. Was she a fearsome sort of queen, then? Robb found that he wasn’t afraid of her, but that might have been down to arrogance. Or perhaps it was more of the unwillingness to fight for his own life that had plagued him during his recovery.

“I should have said sooner,” Tyrion started, hesitating, looking away from Daenerys and meeting Robb’s eyes with an attempted servility that felt horrible and awkward from the older man. “How sorry I am for the part my family played in the, well…”

“The Red Wedding,” Robb said. He ticked one eyebrow up, the way his mother used to. “I’m told that’s what they call it.”

“Yes,” Tyrion said. He cleared his throat. “I wanted to express my sympathies, and to ensure you that…”

“You were serving the crown, then, weren’t you?” Robb asked. He knew, of course. Sansa had already told him exactly what happened when news of the doomed wedding reached the capital. He knew even that Tyrion had shown Sansa some sympathy, and that he had berated his nephew for taunting her about it.

It wasn’t enough. It was _something_ , but it wasn’t enough.

“Yes. I…”

“Your father had taken back his seat as Hand of the King, but you were still there. Married to my little sister against her will.”

Tyrion’s face had grown pale. Robb couldn’t quite muster sympathy. It was curious to feel so detached from his emotions again, after weeks of feeling like himself. He wasn’t particularly angry. He didn’t even think he hated Tyrion very much. The worst of the Lannisters was already dead, and Tyrion had done the job. Joffrey was dead too, and though Tyrion had not committed the crime, there was a reason those rumors were so prevalent; Tyrion hadn’t been fond of his nephew. But Robb would not bend to the dragon queen. He would continue to fight for the independence of the north. He would not be cowed by a list of titles and a tacit show of strength. If he needed to air his grievances to get the point across, then that was what he would do. He could question it later. He could be frightened of reprisal later. He couldn’t hesitate now.

“My father,” Tyrion started. Robb laughed. The sound echoed even louder than his words.

“Shall we talk about fathers? Mine was attacked in the street by your brother. He was injured, and held prisoner. I called my banners to get him back. Peace could have been possible, then. But my father was beheaded on the order of your nephew and your sister.”

“I am not my family,” Tyrion said. “I have done my best to help yours.”

“Your best, was it? Or just enough to feel like you were at least better than _them_?”

“It was war, Robb,” Tyrion explained with evident frustration.

“ _Your grace_ ,” Brienne snapped. Tyrion threw up his hands. Daenerys watched all of it impassively. As much as this was mostly performance, Robb did feel the slight stirrings of anger, then.

“It was war? Is _that_ it? Is that how your father justified the murders of Elia Martell and her children?” he asked. The expression on the dragon queen's face wavered slightly. He couldn’t tell if she was angry or just surprised. “Is that how Theon Greyjoy, another of your allies, justified betraying my family?”

Silence greeted that particular pronouncement. Good. They were beginning to understand that it wouldn’t be enough to placate the King in the North’s temper. There were reasons enough for him to refuse to kneel, and few enough reasons for him to trust. If she wanted to force the issue, she would have to force the issue. He wouldn’t let her think she was on high ground. She could sit as far above him on that throne as she wanted. She could list all the titles she had. She could make up fifty more. It didn’t matter. He wouldn’t be impressed by the threats of a conqueror, and he wouldn’t kneel to just any queen. Not even one with three dragons. If she wanted to take his crown, she would take his crown, but his people and _her_ people would know it to be by force.

He took a deep, performative breath.

“My wife,” he said. “My mother. And my unborn child. All were killed because of Lannisters. My father was killed by Lannisters. My sister was married twice to my family’s enemies, the second time to a man who was such a monster that she and Theon risked their lives to jump from the walls of Winterfell because they would have rather died than stay under his rule.” He met the eyes of the queen. She seemed rattled by his outburst, though her chin still lifted with stiffened pride when he looked at her. “I apologize, your grace, for my harshness,” he said. “But I have only just been reunited with my sister after years apart, and it is still difficult to talk about. I came here to negotiate, and I will negotiate. The north would be glad to join your cause against the Lannister queen, but I will not bend the knee, and I will not forsake the independence that my family and my _people_ have fought and died for. They have entrusted it to me, and I will not give it up.”

Daenerys stood, and she walked gracefully down the steps until she was standing level with him.

“I apologize,” she said. Her voice was clear and low and kind, and she ignored the surprise and confusion of her advisors behind her as she took the final step off the dais. “I know something of forced marriages, and my every sympathy is with your sister. Tyrion has no intention of pressing his claim to her hand. You have my word.”

Surprised by the earnestness of her address, Robb nodded.

“Thank you, your grace,” he said.

“Perhaps it would be better to meet tomorrow, when you aren’t so fresh from the road,” Daenerys continued. “And in a less formal setting, without so many eyes.”

Something sparkled in her, then. Some mirth. Could she tell that his anger had been exaggerated? Or was she merely realizing that the formal audience had been a mistake? He dipped his head in acknowledgement, and she held his gaze.

Then she turned back to Tyrion and the beautiful translator, and she gestured to them. Wordlessly, they followed her out of the room. The rest of her people stayed, watching the northern party as they were led from the room by smiling handmaidens who did not speak to them.

“You know, that went better than I expected it would,” Davos said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Ignite by Helen Jane Long, which was kind of my Robb/Dany theme for this whole story


	24. Daenerys III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dany tries to figure out how to recover from the disastrous first impression she made on Robb Stark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to everyone who read and commented on yesterday's chapter! It's my earnest intention to start posting faster now that I'm moving along on my edits.

Dany kept her calm until she was back in the war room, and only Tyrion was with her.

She dismissed Missandei and Grey Worm both at the door with a silent nod, sending them on their way. She could feel her anger rising within her, and it was an anger that was all for her Hand; she did not want the others to witness it.

Dany had been angry with Tyrion before, but her embarrassment made it sharper. She felt a stinging heat across her face that spread and deepened as she swallowed back her harshest words and forced herself to be level. _I must be composed_ , she thought. _I must_ …but it was no use. She was not meant to be so contained.

“I looked a _fool_ in front of the man you insist we need as an ally,” she said. Her rage quivered in her voice, and it was made worse by the fact that with her humiliation still on her, it sounded weak to her own ears. Quailing, like she used to sound when she was a little girl. She wasn’t a little girl any longer. She was a Khaleesi. She was the rightful queen of the seven kingdoms, no matter what Robb Stark and his band of northern rebels thought. She could not afford to look weak or childish, and that was exactly what her anger made her seem. Robb Stark had delivered a scathing address and had not once seemed anything but righteous. That was the kind of poise she needed to have. That was the kind of delivery that made people _listen_.

She swallowed her anger. She pushed it down.

“I didn’t think it would be like that,” Tyrion murmured, his eyes downcast.

Even her anger could not entirely quell her mirth at that, and a smile came to her face unbidden. Wry and dry and irritated, but a smile all the same. She sat down at the war table with a sigh. She felt anger still, and embarrassment, but the danger had passed. As always, it left her feeling wary and a bit shaken.

_Was that what the Kingslayer saw before he slew my father?_ she often wondered. _Was he afraid of my father like Tyrion was just afraid of me?_

But no. She was not her father. And she was no longer a young girl playing at ruling, and she was no longer a Khaleesi of the Dothraki. They may have valued rage and strength and the releasing of the fire within her, but the Westerosi would want a different sort of ruler. They were a different sort of people. If they were to be _hers_ , she needed to remember that her father had thrown tantrums, too.

With her anger tucked safely away, she had room within herself to look back on her first meeting with Robb Stark with more objective eyes. She could see him, standing at the foot of her throne. Looking up at her. His eyes had already been tight with tension and distaste. It had gone wrong right from the start. Perhaps it had gone wrong from the moment she’d had Tyrion summon him, but she wouldn’t so quickly write it off as unsalvageable. She thought back to the many rulers she had known. The many wealthy men and women who had courted her for her dragons or had sneered at her for her youth. She had known so many. Surely by now she had some idea of how she wanted to rule instead.

“Treating it as a ceremony was a mistake,” she said. “I need to earn his trust first, before I make any demands for his fealty. And even then…”

“His family died for northern independence, and these northerners are a stubborn lot. I don’t know that it will be so easy. Even if he does make common cause with you. Even if he does _support_ you. If you expect to rule the north at the end, more will be required.”

“More,” Daenerys said. “Like what?”

Tyrion hesitated, but evidently thought better of suggesting what he was about to.

“I don’t know, your grace,” he said instead. “Let’s recover from one of my disastrous suggestions before we go spinning headlong into another.”

She did laugh, then, relieved to find that her anger with Tyrion was mostly faded. Her embarrassment, however, lingered. She wished not for the first time for the presence of Jorah Mormont. He would have better been able to prepare her for the arrival of Robb Stark. He would have told her that Stark needed to see her good heart, not displays of power. Would she have listened to him? She liked to think so. Tyrion’s idea had seemed to make sense at the time, though.

_People know the Targaryens,_ she had told herself when she was sitting on her throne. _He will see me, and he will know I am one of them. Not a beggar any longer, but a queen._

But it would have been better to be a beggar than an unjust queen. Better a beggar who was proud of where she had come from and not a queen lauded for the circumstances of her birth. Yes, that would have been the way to win over Lord Stark. Tyrion’s idea had placed her so high as to be out of reach. No wonder the northerners had been unimpressed. They had split from the rest of the seven kingdoms because of Joffrey Baratheon and his mother. From what Daenerys had heard from Tyrion about both of them, they were lofty and imperious sorts who always needed to show their power. It had been so _obviously_ the wrong play to do exactly what they would have done.

“What do you think your sister is doing right now?” she asked. Tyrion seemed wary about the sudden change in conversation, which she could hardly blame him for. “Do you think she is meeting with her people? Do you think she is sitting with them as their equal and listening to their concerns? Do you think she is spending any time wondering about where to get food for them? Or do you think she has only surrounded herself with advisors who praise her every choice and never question her?”

“Are you sure you’ve never met my sister?” Tyrion asked.

“I can’t be like your sister, Tyrion. I can’t be like my father, either. That isn’t going to win us any favors, and I don’t _want_ to be like them. I want to rule fairly. I want my people to love me.”

“I think every ruler starts out with that thought.”

“Do you?”

“The better ones.”

“You keep telling me how special I am. Maybe I will be the one to actually stick to it.”

Tyrion smiled a little.

“Maybe,” he said, though she could see he doubted. “Ruling is about…it’s about realizing what you can and cannot do for people. The people don’t care about you. They don’t _love_ you. They love the figurehead. They love the prosperity that the figurehead brings. Even if you spoke to them. Sat down with every person in your kingdom and told them your story. Even if you justified your _every_ action. It only matters until the prosperity stops, and then you’re the wicked cunt who stole their gold and starved their children. You have brought a foreign army to Westeros. War means that Westerosi will die by that foreign army. And I know that you’ve done what you can, but men are men, and men are monsters. We both know this. There will be rapes. There will be pillaging. There will be killing of smallfolk. Those people you leave behind after your armies have razed their villages and stolen their women, they aren’t going to love you. Daenerys, your grace, I don’t say this to say that you cannot be a good queen. I say this to say that being a good queen and being a loved queen are…it isn’t impossible. But you weren’t born a queen. To take Westeros back in your family’s name, you will have to make enemies of the great houses who stand against you, and you will have to make enemies of the smallfolk who serve them.”

“So I shouldn’t even try? That’s your advice? Just do whatever it takes to see myself on the throne? Let the people hate me. Let them rage against me. It won’t matter, because I’m in power? That’s a remarkably Lannister answer from you, Tyrion.”

She expected him to be annoyed by that, but he only smiled.

“Maybe,” he admitted. “It isn’t one I’m proud to give. But it’s the right one.”

“No. I don’t accept that. To accept that would mean accepting that I’m not any different from any other would-be ruler. Not my father. Not your sister. Not Robb Stark. Not Robert Baratheon.”

“You are different from all of them,” Tyrion sighed.

“Why? Because I have dragons? Is _that_ to be my legacy? Winning through fear and fire? I don’t want that.”

“There may not be another way to win.”

“May not,” Dany repeated stubbornly. “And yet there may _be_. I don’t want to be just another queen. I want to break the wheel.”

“Why do you _want_ to be queen?” Tyrion asked suddenly. He seemed more curious than the frustration she had expected. “Your motivation. If you boiled it down to the very bottom, what would you say? Why do you want to be queen? Think about it, first.”

_Because it is my birthright_ , Dany thought. That was the first answer that came to mind. But she was willing to humor Tyrion. He said to think about it, and so she did. Beyond just the reflexive answer that she wanted to give, why _did_ she want to be queen? She wanted to be queen to avenge her family, perhaps. She wanted to be queen to make things better for everyone. That was a good answer. It was the answer that she wanted to give. But she considered further. Did she _need_ to be queen to make things better? She had tried, in her journey to Westeros. She had done what she thought was right, only to find that the corruption went deeper than she had time to figure out. She had to leave each time, leave the cities crumbling and vulnerable. The slaves she freed had only _tasted_ freedom before being plunged back into poverty and war. Westeros would be different, because she would _have_ the time. She would stay.

_Why do you want to be queen?_

“I don’t know that I _do_ want to be queen,” she said. She thought of the house with the red door again. That had always been what she thought she wanted. Home. Somewhere safe. The Red Keep. The place where her family was in power. It had to be that. That was the only place, and she was the only person to rule it. “It isn’t about what I want. It’s about what I can do to change things.”

Tyrion nodded. He looked unconvinced. Dany found that she couldn’t blame him. What was she really doing to change things, anyway? What was she changing? What _would_ she change by putting a Targaryen back on the throne? Breaking the wheel shouldn’t mean putting the old powers back in power, should it? Meereen taught her that, among other things.

“You need to win the war,” Tyrion said. “You need to take the kingdom back. You can’t do that without collateral damage, as sorry as I am to say it. But when it’s over, you can make the kingdom over again into what you want. But you need _power_ to do that. It isn’t as simple as winning the war and then changing everything at once. Not if you don’t want to be a tyrant, and I know you don’t. You need to take things slow enough that people will support you. If you lose everyone at once with different changes, there will be no one.”

_Like Meereen_ , she thought again. She frowned down at the map on the table. Would she ever be free of Meereen? But that was an unfair thought. The people who still had to live there were certainly not free of the things she had tried to do. Why should _she_ be allowed to escape it?

“You’re right,” she said. “And we will address that once I reach that point. But your sister still wears her crown, and Robb Stark still stays in my castle, thinking me an absurd, trussed-up little girl on a foolishly large throne.” She huffed a laugh and found her eyes lingering on a wolf figurine on the table. Someone had left it knocked over at The Twins. Dany took it and set it upright again, back in Winterfell, where it belonged.

Stark’s voice had been strong and broken at once as he spoke about his dead mother and his dead wife and his dead child. He had not wavered, and he did not burn the way she always felt when she was angry. His anger didn’t simmer inside him and grow ever outward. It chilled him and steadied him and gave him purpose. His family had been slaughtered because of the Lannisters and their allies, and he spoke of it with a pain that she felt in her own chest. He and Dany had both suffered much. Dany had lost her own husband, and her own child. She had been driven from her home, and she had found her way back. There were common threads there that she just had to seize.

She _was_ a queen. She _was_ all of the titles she had earned on her journey. But she had been _more_ than that, once. She used to think it was less. That frightened little girl who lived in Illyrio’s manse and who thought she understood the cruelties of the world. A young girl frightened and unsure how to survive when she was forced into a marriage she didn’t want. She had banished that young girl as best as she could. _If I look back, I am lost._ But looking back didn’t mean lingering. It didn’t mean _becoming_ that little girl again. It only meant that that little girl could remind her of what it was like to want simple things. Simple happiness.

“Lord Stark’s Hand,” she said. “He was a simple spoken man.”

“His name is Davos Seaworth, your grace. I believe he was a smuggler. He also served as Hand to Stannis Baratheon, who raised him to a Lord some years ago.”

“Did he? I’d like you to talk with him tomorrow. Keep him distracted. I want to talk to Lord Stark alone. I think he will better receive me if we are both unguarded.”

“Unguarded, your grace?” Tyrion asked uncomfortably. “I’m not sure that’s wise.”

“Grey Worm will be at the door. And the woman who came in with Lord Stark. I assume she’s the guard you spoke of. The one who knows your brother.”

“Lady Brienne, yes.”

“She can stay at the door as well. But we should talk alone. I would have Lord Stark understand that I am not my father, and I’m not Cersei.”

“As you say, your grace,” Tyrion said. He bowed and left the room. He looked uncomfortable, perhaps that his idea had so blatantly failed, or perhaps that she was moving on with her own. It was difficult to say. She was glad to be rid of him, in any case. She had no energy to soothe his ego; though she was no longer blindly angry, she still was annoyed that she had allowed him to make her make such a misstep.

Tomorrow would be different. She would fix this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Awake My Soul by Mumford and Sons
> 
> (also, because someone asked: I DO in fact have the songs in a playlist on spotify! It's just called Honor Compels Me + is publically viewable! I have the first ~60 songs on the playlist already and am adding the rest as I edit!)


	25. Sansa VI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bran returns, and he shares some devastating information with Sansa

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay! So! I'm coming up to a very busy three weeks in my personal life, and I've also hit the back third of my first edits for this story. They are currently, to put it mildly, a bit of a mess. I really want to keep to my posting schedule so I'm going to do my best, but I probably won't be catching up on replying to all the comments for a bit! I'll do it in a slow trickle, but I usually like to answer all of them before/soon after posting a new chapter, and that just isn't feasible for me at this point. This weekend and next weekend in particular are very busy, but I had about an hour today and wanted to get this done! 
> 
> i know you're probably thinking "you didn't need to say that" but I have an enormous guilt complex, so I definitely do!
> 
> If you want to yell at me (or be nice to me!) about this story, I'm at angel-deux-writes on tumblr.

Bran returning to them was as unexpected as it was welcome, but the welcome feeling didn’t last.

Alone in her rooms, Sansa had to take off her cloak. She felt overheated, and there was a tightness in her chest like the panic that used to come over her whenever she heard the latch on her door when Ramsay was still alive.

_You looked so beautiful._

Bran’s words had been bland, delivered with a deadened expression and a barely-there smile that made everything _worse_ , somehow. Thinking about it, even hours later, she felt her throat clog with tears.

As a boy, Bran would never have said something so cruel. If he had somehow seen her on her wedding night to that monster, he would have crawled into her lap and hugged her. He would have cried, because he was always so sensitive, though he tried to pretend he wasn’t. This new Bran…

Arya hadn’t expressed any of her distress, but Sansa had been able to read it in the things Arya didn’t show. Arya and Bran had always been close as children, being so near each other in age. They had been like Robb and Jon, or perhaps like Sansa and Robb when they were young enough to play together without the separation that came as they grew.

Bran and Arya together had been like feral creatures. They had shared this insatiable appetite for mischief, and it was painful to remember the excitement on Arya’s face in the courtyard fading into bewilderment as it became clear that Bran was no longer _Bran_.

Jon’s face had been stony, too, and he had remained uncommonly quiet, even for him. None of them knew how to talk to this creature that had returned to them wearing Bran's face and reciting Bran's memories. Sansa had tried, her courtesies providing a kind of armor as they always did when she didn’t know what to say. And that was when Bran had said it. Alluded to her wedding. Told her how _beautiful_ she had been on the night she married that fucking monster. And the worst part was that Bran didn’t even seem to _notice._

If he did notice, he certainly didn’t care.

It was not enough to remove her cloak. Still she felt overheated, and her skin still felt too tight, and she still felt afraid. Trapped. She crossed to the window and flung it open, letting in the chill. Tormund was in the yard with Arya. Bran was likely still with Jon in the godswood, and Sansa _hated_ that she felt relief not to see him. Arya was demonstrating a move to Tormund that she must have just used on him in sparring, because he was covered in snow all down his left side. Small and lithe, Sansa’s sister danced around the Wildling man while he did all he could to keep up with her and block her. He wasn’t loud and blustering or quieter and mocking, but watching her carefully, learning her footwork. He had surprised Sansa and Jon both by taking his duties seriously after Jon assigned him to train the undisciplined Free Folk forces to prepare them for the wars to come.

It was calming to watch them. It was slower than a true fight, slightly faster than a dance. It helped to see how capable Arya was. To see her showing off her skills with so much confidence. _She can protect herself_ , Sansa thought with relief. _That’s one less thing to worry about._ Tormund didn’t seem to mind at all to be so soundly trounced by a girl, and he laughed the kind of full laugh that meant throwing back his head. He said something admiring that Sansa couldn’t hear, but it made Arya’s eyes light up. Tormund called for someone, and a small girl ran up eagerly from where she had been watching. Arya grinned, and she produced a wooden sword from a rack off to the side. She beckoned the girl closer.

There. That had done it. Sansa sagged in relief against the stone. This wasn’t the Winterfell of Ramsay Bolton. She wasn’t Sansa Bolton. She was Sansa Stark. She was free of any husband. She was surrounded by people who loved her and who would do anything to keep her safe. She didn’t have to be afraid anymore. Her face was cooling. Her heart was slowing. Her dress no longer felt like it was strangling her.

She watched a little longer, though she didn’t need it like she had when she first entered the room. She thought of Arya when she was younger, always begging for a sword or for a chance to _learn_ , at least, to use one. She saw how happy that little girl looked, watching a girl as slight as Arya handily beat a big man like Tormund despite her little knife and littler form. Tormund was roaring with laughter, slapping Arya on the back with a brotherly camaraderie that made Arya’s face split into a childlike grin. Sansa closed her eyes and breathed in the cold air. It smelled like it would snow soon, and she was back in Winterfell with most of her family. She didn’t have to be afraid.

Well. There were _some_ things to be afraid of.

Her latest response to Jaime Lannister was drying on the desk, and it reminded her. His warning about Littlefinger hadn’t been necessary, but the fact that he thought she had needed it…

_Only an idiot would trust Littlefinger_. She said that to Jon once, and it remained true. Littlefinger was not someone who could be trusted, and yet he was still in their home, wandering their halls. He was the only thing left in Winterfell to be feared. The dead were coming, but Littlefinger was _here_ , and she knew how much damage he could do if he was given enough time in which to do it. He had to be removed somehow, and he had to be _placated_ until then. She had been so sure that she could handle him, but there were days when she thought she would _never_ be able to handle Lord Baelish.

She picked up her cloak from where she had tossed it on the bed. If Bran could help them with anything, hopefully it would be this.

* * *

By the time she reached Bran and Jon in the godswood, her mask was back in place, but Bran looked at her as if he could see right through it.

“I didn’t intend to upset you,” he said. Jon looked pained. He was hunched in his cloak, though he didn’t often complain about the cold. The temperature was dropping quickly, and the wind bit at Sansa’s exposed skin the more the sun set.

Sansa liked the cold. She liked the chill on her face. It kept her exactly where she was. There was no danger slipping away.

“I know you didn’t,” she said. She could almost hear Arya’s voice: _that’s a lie_. Arya had been annoying before, but at least she hadn’t been able to tell when Sansa wasn’t telling the truth. Sansa did so much lying these days. It had been frustrating to realize that there was someone she _couldn’t_ lie to. Arya sounded amused, at this point, when she made the accusations. As if to say: _really? You haven’t learned by now that that doesn’t work with me?_

She was softer, Arya. Sansa had thought her harder at first, but that wasn’t it at all. She was softer than she had been. She would look at Sansa, and Sansa would know that she was truly _seen_. Arya understood Sansa in ways she never had before. She wasn’t as angry. Not in the way where she struggled against everything, never quite seeming to fit. She was more at peace with herself than she used to be.

Sansa was the one who was harder than she had been. Sansa was the one who was struggling with herself, fighting against herself, desperately trying to be something else. Could Bran see that, too? Could he see that as easily as he had seen her at her wedding?

“I forget sometimes,” Bran said, though he didn’t explain what it was that he forgot. He looked at the tree. “Jon asked me about the Night King.”

Sansa felt some fondness for Jon, untouched by all the things about Jon that confused and confounded her. She smiled over at him, and her smile grew when he looked embarrassed.

“Yes, of course he did,” she said. She sat beside him in the snow, folding her cloak under herself. Jon looked pained again, but he didn’t say anything. She looked up at Bran in his wheeled chair. “What did you say?”

“He’s right. The Night King is coming. He’ll have the means to break through the Wall soon.”

“Is there any way to stop him?” Sansa asked.

“No,” Bran said. “This was always inevitable.”

“Is there a chance of you ever speaking fucking plainly?” asked Arya, melting out of the fog. She arched an eyebrow at Sansa that was probably meant as a greeting, but it made Sansa realize how close she sat to Jon, and how it must look to Arya, who _knew_. She stood again, and Arya watched her. She brushed the snow off her cloak and moved away, jittery, her hands clasped together to keep them from giving her away further.

“I am speaking plainly,” Bran said. “It’s everything else that isn’t plain.”

“Seven hells,” Arya muttered.

“What should be we _doing_?” Sansa asked. “Surely there’s something. What would you advise?”

“The pieces will fall into place on their own,” Bran said. Arya rolled her eyes and groaned aloud. Bran ignored her. “It should happen here. At Winterfell. This is where his power will be weakest.”

“What? Why?” Arya asked.

“I can’t tell you that.”

“These seem like some shite magic powers, actually,” Arya said. “I think I’d rather have my brother back.”

Bran didn’t feel the need to respond to that. He just looked at Sansa.

“I _can_ help you with something,” he said. “Littlefinger. You were right not to trust him. But you don’t know the whole of his plans, yet. I can tell you.”

“Yes,” Jon said, eager, leaning closer, eager to be able to stop at least one bad thing before it had a chance to happen. “Can you?”

“His aims are rather straightforward,” Bran said, as if bored by Littlefinger’s attempts at subterfuge. Sansa felt a thrill of something in her to hear it. She was so used to thinking of Littlefinger as powerful. Almost omniscient. She loved to hear him dismissed so easily by her brother. “He is a simpler man than he thinks. He has pulled the strings of everything that has happened to us.”

“Yes,” Sansa agreed.

“Far more than you know,” Bran cautioned.

* * *

After a long conversation about Littlefinger between the four of them, and then a devastating private conversation between just she and Bran, Sansa saw Bran settled in his new rooms, and then she returned to her own. Jon was waiting.

“Arya’s keeping an eye on him,” he said. Sansa knew he meant Littlefinger, and she nodded. She felt wrong. Hollow. _Exhausted_. She hated him, she realized. Not Jon. Littlefinger. She hated him more than just for what he had done to her. She hated him for what he was. She hated him for trying to claim what wasn’t his. She hated him for his pettiness and his cruelty and his ability to make the world a worse place just by trying to seize a foothold in it.

“I knew he was a monster,” she said. “But I didn’t know how much. Bran…the things he said…”

“I know,” Jon said. He sounded so tired. She felt tired, too.

“I want him dead,” she said. It was a revelation. She hadn’t expected it. Once she had spoken it, it was sparkling in the room between them. She turned and looked at him. Jon was watching her. She couldn’t tell how he felt. She could feel the rage swelling in her chest. She thought of her mother. Her father. Trusting Littlefinger. Aunt Lysa, loving him. How many people had he hurt with his lies? How many people were dead because he wanted _chaos_? “For everything he did to us. To stop him from doing it anymore, or to anyone else. I hardly know. I just want him dead.”

“I’ll kill him,” Jon said. It was spoken sincerely. Not _angrily_. Not with any particular passion. It was very quiet and intense, and he didn’t look away from her eyes.

“Jon,” she said.

“I would. Do you know that? I would kill him if you asked. I meant it when I said I would protect you. You can’t feel safe as long as he’s here. I know you wanted to try and deal with him another way, but there _isn’t_ another way.”

Her breathing was coming harder, like it did during her panics, but she wasn’t panicked now. She felt instead light, overwhelmed by it. He would do it. If she asked for Littlefinger’s head, he would bring it to her.

_Is this what Cersei felt?_

Bran was the one who told her. He wanted to speak to her alone, and she had been so afraid. She hadn’t wanted to hear anything else. Even Bran’s apologies might dredge up some memories she didn’t want. But she had nodded and stayed behind, and Bran told her what happened to him.

What he had seen. What Jaime Lannister had done. What Cersei had said.

“I thought you fell,” she said. “Bran. I thought. I’m so. I won’t write to him anymore. I promise. I thought…”

“That’s not why I’m telling you,” Bran had replied. “I’m telling you so you understand him better.”

“ _Understand_ him? He pushed you from a tower. He meant to _kill_ you.”

“Yes, but he didn’t. And if he hadn’t done what he did, we might all be lost. I might not have become the Three Eyed Raven. I know you might prefer that, but I need to be as I am if we are going to win against the Night King.”

“It doesn’t matter. He’s _evil_. I won’t…”

“You will. And you must. What do you think would have happened? If I had climbed down the tower and told everyone what I had seen?”

“What?” Sansa had asked. She couldn’t get the image out of her head. Jaime Lannister grabbing Bran’s shirt. Tossing him backward. She couldn’t believe she had started to _like_ him. To count him as a friend. All along he had been playing her for a fool. Maybe she _was_ one. Had Cersei been involved after all? Had the twins laughed together over her silly little letters?

“If I went to the king. If I said ‘I saw your queen in the arms of her brother in the Broken Tower’, what do you think he would have done? Do you think he would have allowed them to live? Do you think he would have allowed the children to live?”

Sansa couldn’t understand. It was as if he was speaking an entirely different language.

“Are you defending him?”

“I’m explaining him. I have seen him. I saw him kill the Mad King. I saw how afraid he was. Aerys was going to burn the city. Aerys was going to kill everyone, and only Jaime Lannister was there to stop him. I saw how his hands shook afterward, and how they called him Kingslayer without ever knowing that he had saved them all. I saw the way he pretended, after. Learned to pretend. Just like you pretend now.”

Sansa’s own hands had been shaking. She clutched them tight.

“Bran,” she had said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that this happened to you. You shouldn’t have to carry all of this.”

“People are easier to understand when you have seen them at their worst and when you have seen them at their best. I know why you told Cersei about father’s plans. I understand that, too. You were just a girl. You didn’t know.”

Sansa had closed her eyes, then.

“Please. Please stop.”

“I know why Cersei wanted me dead. I know that she was afraid for her children. I know why she blew up the sept. Understanding doesn’t always mean forgiving. But I forgive him. I forgive both of them. Just as I have forgiven all of you. These things can’t matter anymore. We were different people then, and we need to be better now.”

“I will never forgive Cersei for what she did to me,” Sansa had said, and Bran had only smiled.

“No. You won’t. But you will understand her.”

Was this what he meant? Was this what Cersei had been feeling when she told Jaime that something needed to be done about Bran and Jaime had chosen to push him out the window? To be faced with a problem, whatever that problem was, and to know that Jaime would handle it? Jon would kill Littlefinger for her. All she had to do was ask. It wouldn’t matter about the consequences. It wouldn’t matter that they would lose half their army if the lords of the Vale chose to respond to the murder. Jon would do it anyway.

Sansa stepped closer, and Jon gently took her upper arms in his hands. His thumbs rubbed circles into her cloak, and the skin beneath her layers tingled. Old scars come to life. Did Cersei ever cling to Jaime when she was afraid? Did Cersei feel these shivers of wanting to be closer?

_Understanding doesn’t mean forgiving._ She had needed to hear that. She understood Cersei too well sometimes, but that didn’t mean she had to be like her. She forced herself to step back from Jon and pace across the room to her desk. She wanted to feel sickened, but she wasn’t. She felt safe.

“I wish it was that simple,” she said. “And I know you would do anything you had to to make sure we’re safe.”

“I would,” Jon promised. He still stood where she left him. She wished she could better read his expression.

“I know. But we need to be smart about it. You can’t protect me from everything.”

Jon seemed surprised by that. He smiled a little when he saw that she was smiling too.

“I know,” he admitted. “That doesn’t mean I can’t try.”

Sansa nodded. She looked towards the drawer where her unfinished letter to Jaime Lannister was hidden. She didn’t see how she was supposed to finish it now. She crumpled it up and carried it to the fire. She thrust it in before she could second-guess herself. She should not have felt anything but vindicated. She should not have felt a glimmer of pain, like she was losing something _good_.

“We need to trust Arya to handle it,” she said. She knew Jon wouldn’t like to hear that. He had been livid when Arya first suggested being the one to take care of the threat. Before he could argue again now, she said, “this is what she trained for.”

“So she said,” Jon muttered. He watched the letter burn, and she wondered what he thought it was. She hadn’t told him about her letters to Jaime, and Bran had made her swear not to tell him about what Jaime had done. _The man who pushed me died when he lost his hand_ , he said. Sansa didn’t know if that was true. Too many things had happened today. She felt…

“I don’t like it either,” she said, cutting off her own train of thought. “I wish we could protect her. But we can’t treat her like a little sister forever. If she can do what she says she can…”

“I know,” Jon admitted. He sank into a chair by the fireplace. They used to sit together almost every night, but it had been different since Robb's return. Sansa used to sew, and Jon would watch, or read, or write whatever correspondence he needed to write. They were simpler. Warmer, too.

And still she had wanted.

“So many enemies,” Sansa said. She sat beside him. The letter to Jaime was ash, now.

_The man who pushed me died when he lost his hand. He is no longer that same man. And there will be more death to come. You will forgive him, or you will mourn him. There are no other options._

“But we’re together,” Jon said. It was rare for him to sound hopeful, but he did, now. He looked warm in his cloak, in the firelight. He was almost smiling at her. “We’re home. And if Bran is right, we have a chance.”

Sansa smiled back.

“You’re right,” she said, and she allowed herself one brief touch. She covered his gloved hand with her own, and she squeezed. She should be happier with what she had instead of being so dissatisfied with what she didn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Blanket Me by Hundred Waters


	26. Brienne IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robb and Daenerys have their private discussion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the last time i posted a chapter with these two, I got a LOT of comments/controversy about Northern Independence and I'm sorry in advance if I piss anyone off again lmao but this is just how this fic is gonna be! I cannot stress that enough.
> 
> As far as editing goes, I'm on my 2nd edits of Chapter 71, and I'm hoping to be done with those 2nd edits soon enough so that I can begin posting a bit faster! 
> 
> I can't remember if I've said this before here but I'm planning on also doing a collection of one-shots set in this universe based on prompts I receive on tumblr. So if there's a scene you want more details for, or an alternate POV, or anything really, head over to angel-deux-writes on tumblr and prompt me there!

Robb was amused when the pretty woman from the day before—who finally had a chance to introduce herself as Missandei when she wasn’t busy rattling off her queen’s various honorifics—came to their assigned rooms and announced that he had been invited to a private audience with the “rightful queen of the seven kingdoms”.

“Not a _great_ start,” he remarked aside to Brienne once Missandei left to wait in the hall for them.

“She left off the other titles,” Brienne pointed out. It was still an effort not to call him _your grace_ , but he had requested that she not, and so she didn’t. She was gratified when he laughed. He was her king, and she was sworn to his family. She could not quite forget that. But their journey to Dragonstone had allowed them to forge a connection that was comfortable to her. There were still too many moments when she felt uncomfortable with Lady Sansa, in the sense that neither of them understood how to talk to each other. They both shared the same affinity for stories and songs, and they could talk at length about old tales and about their own pasts. But Brienne had never felt comfortable around women like Sansa. She had tried for so long to be like them, to emulate them, to be a woman like her septa wished for her to be. She had failed at every turn to master the things at which Sansa so excelled. Sansa could embroider and hold a conversation without fumbling with either of those things. She had a knack for dressing herself and always looked stunning no matter what she chose to wear. She was constantly making clothing for people, as if it was an easy thing to do. As if she was handing out small trinkets like the ones Brienne’s father used to buy at the markets, except these were beautiful garments that Sansa had spent hours making. She was always surprising Brienne with new tunics or breeches or cloaks. Or, if not new, then repaired when Brienne didn’t even think to ask.

Those were the kinds of things that the ladies of great houses didn’t do for themselves, Brienne didn’t think, but Sansa claimed to find it soothing. Brienne could never understand that. Her own fingers were too big and too bulky to be of any use when making delicate things, and she had always despaired of it. She could field stitch wounds, and she could repair simple tears. Her clothing was easy enough, but the patches were obvious, and they were never pretty.

Sansa, too, was always _thinking_. Like her lady mother had, Sansa was always planning for the worst outcomes, so as to never be surprised. She was always asking questions about the way things were run. Brienne was used to feeling like a blunt instrument, not a delicate one, and she always felt _simple_ when Sansa would display curiosity about how something was baked or sewed or made from wood. It was all to help rebuild her family home, Brienne knew, and not for idle curiosity, but it still surprised her, sometimes, hearing Sansa ask about things that Brienne never would.

Robb was simpler. Robb had his sister’s mind and his mother’s sharpness, but he shared Brienne’s blunt approach to things, and Brienne _knew_ fighting. Sparring. She liked to teach Robb, help him strengthen his arm and get back into his fighting form, which had evaded him since he was injured at the Red Wedding. _That_ was a way that Brienne could be of use, and she could be of use when she made him laugh, as well. They had similarly dry senses of humor, and she knew that he would not judge her for her inadequacies, like her habit of falling in love with beautiful, unreachable men like Renly and Jaime. He had fallen in love foolishly, too, after all. The existence of Brienne’s affections for Jaime felt _settled_ between she and Robb in a way they still didn’t quite feel between she and Sansa.

* * *

She followed Robb to the airy room where the meeting was to happen. Dragonstone was a cold and unwelcoming place, but Daenerys and her people had made this room as pleasant as possible. They had hung gauzy curtains to bracket the doors that led to the balcony. Every bit of seating was covered in something soft, and there were wall hangings with beautiful designs that hid the drab stone beneath. Robb didn’t bother to hide his interest or his admiration.

Everything about the dragon queen’s court was so new to Brienne. Tarth had its fair share of visitors from across the Narrow Sea, so Brienne had seen ships and their crews and always liked to look at the people who arrived from other lands, their clothing and weapons and languages were always so different. Their wares, too, that they sold down by the docks. The pieces of jewelry and the beautiful scarves and the dresses that left the wearers almost bare. Brienne would stare and touch and _want_ , and sometimes her father would buy her little gifts of things. Handkerchiefs and small stone or wood carvings, painted to look like animals that only existed across the sea. Jewelry worked into beautiful patterns that she had never seen. The court of the dragon queen was like that on a much bigger scale. The people. The languages. The art and the wardrobe and the elaborate hairstyles. All of it was so new and exciting. Brienne hid her reactions to every new thing with a blank look, as she hid everything, but Robb was less subtle.

Daenerys did not leave them alone in the room for long, which spoke well of her, Brienne thought. It would have been an obvious attempt at a power play if she had made them wait. The dragon queen was dressed in softer clothing than she had been the day before, too, and she had her hair only half braided so that the rest of it fell about her shoulders in gentle waves of white. Brienne had to wonder if it was something that Tyrion advised or if it was something that she had chosen for herself. Perhaps a knack for dressing towards the impression she wanted to give off was a skill that Daenerys and Sansa shared. Brienne had noticed the differences in the way Sansa dressed herself for different audiences, though she hadn’t developed the language to describe what each look meant. She knew that some choices were for Sansa’s own armor, and some were for the way she wanted to look. Vulnerable or strong or determined or needful. A language to speak to the men around her without saying any words.

“I hope your quarters are to your tastes,” Daenerys said, including both Robb and Brienne in her address.

“They’re quite comfortable,” Robb said. Brienne bowed her head, too nervous to speak.

“I thought our guards might stand outside the door, but Grey Worm disagreed,” Daenerys said, indicating the man in the Unsullied garb who stood just inside the door. “He agreed to himself and Lady Brienne remaining by the door inside.”

“I’m sure Lady Brienne will accept that as well,” Robb said. He looked at her for confirmation, his eyes sparkling with amusement at the formality of the address, and she nodded again, feeling a fool for her silence but not wanting to speak and make it worse. She joined Grey Worm by the door. He was much smaller than her, but she wouldn’t make the mistake of thinking him less powerful. She saw him eyeing her the same way she eyed him. To her surprise, he smiled slightly, amused by their study of each other. She allowed a tiny lift of her lips as well before she stood with her back to the door, watching the audience in the room beyond.

Brienne was used to watching intimate conversations that would have been better had without audiences. She had been used to it in Renly’s camp, watching his war councils, standing guard while he talked to Margaery Tyrell, listening to his conversation with Catelyn Stark. She was used to it with Lady Sansa, watching her early, stilted conversations with Jon or her tense exchanges with Lord Baelish. It felt entirely strange to be witness to this meeting between the king and queen, however. They were two strangers meeting on an attempted level ground, both of them wary and afraid of saying too much. They were two leaders, but to Brienne they looked like _children_. Fumbling for an accord that their much older advisors wanted. Robb was a king, and Daenerys had her many titles even if she wasn’t quite queen of Westeros yet, and Brienne knew that infantilizing them was disrespectful at best. She couldn’t help it. They both seemed too young for the responsibility of this alliance to fall on their shoulders.

Daenerys was too polite as she asked about his journey. Robb was too stiff as he inquired about hers. They stood by the balcony and attempted to converse in a less formal manner, but of course it couldn’t happen when they were both too wary.

Then, something happened. A shift in the air. Daenerys made a comment about her brother.

“The way he described it,” she said, looking around the room in poorly concealed disappointment. “Maybe it was because I was a child, but I expected it to be…a bit nicer.” Her expression twisted into an almost apologetic smile, and Robb almost laughed. A small huff of amusement. A wry lift of one corner of his mouth.

He replied with a story about Sansa from when they were young, and how she would always describe everything as being much more romantic and grand than it was in reality. Daenerys laughed at the story, and it made Robb smile at her. She asked about his siblings. Robb described them. They moved from the balcony and sat at a small table. Daenerys offered him wine.

If it was a performance on either one of their parts, it was a good one. Awkward stiltedness giving way to a quiet kind of relief on both sides. It reminded Brienne of when she had first met Lady Sansa. The lessening tension of discovering that they _did_ have things they could talk about, even if they were so different on the outside.

“That was the last thing I saw,” Robb said quietly, some time later. Daenerys was gazing at him curiously, as if she still wasn’t sure what to make of him. “My mother doing whatever she could to try and bargain for my life. It wasn’t enough. I would have died if the Freys hadn’t been so consumed with their victory that they forgot to check the bodies. My mother’s uncle was able to smuggle me out, and I healed at the castle of my father’s friend. People like to tell me that I was lucky.”

He smiled at her a little bitterly, and Daenerys returned the gesture.

“Yes,” she said, like someone who knew what it was like to be _lucky_ to survive with a bitter aftertaste. “I’m sure they do. It sounds like your mother was a fierce woman. I would have liked to have known her.”

“She was protective of her children,” Robb answered. “She would have done anything for us. She _did_ do anything.”

“I never knew my mother. I wish I had. I imagine she must have been like that as well. My own son…” Daenerys frowned out at the ocean that surrounded Dragonstone. “My son was lost before he was born. But I imagine that I would have been a fierce mother.”

“Undoubtedly,” Robb said. He managed to make it sound like more than mere courtesy, like it was something he truly believed, and it made Daenerys smile. It was encouraging, Brienne thought, though she knew little enough about the politics of this. It was already better than everything that had happened the previous day. Davos would be pleased.

“Your wife,” Daenerys said. “Tyrion tells me that she wasn’t from one of your great houses.”

“No. Talisa was from Volantis,” Robb answered. “I met her when she was healing a man on the battlefield.” He smiled slightly, and Daenerys smiled back reflexively. Another good sign. “I had never met another woman like her before. I was smitten immediately.”

“You loved her before you married her, then. Love found me in my marriage, but I didn’t love him at first.”

“My parents weren’t a love match,” Robb said. “My mother said they fell in love gradually. They had to build it.”

Daenerys nodded at Robb’s questioning look.

“Gradually, yes,” she said wistfully. “I was so afraid at first. My brother had sold me into the marriage to win the crown, and I knew nothing about the Dothraki or their customs except the terrible things I had been told. I didn’t even speak the language. My husband seemed brutish and cruel to me. It was only as the days passed and we learned to communicate that I began to feel something else for him.” She leaned one elbow on the table, closer, her eyes wide with empathy. “I think that what happened to us yesterday wasn’t dissimilar. It was a failure of communication.”

Brienne had to look down at the floor at that, to hide her smile. Daenerys was in many ways like Sansa in that moment. She was sharp and smart and didn’t allow herself to forget what she was truly here for. Brienne admired it. It was clear that Robb did too, for the way he smiled at her. Amused and only slightly strained, to show her that he knew what she was doing.

“I think you’re right,” he said. “It’s easier to talk like this. But I still can’t say whether you’re the right person to lead Westeros. I know little enough about what you’ve done, and where you’ve come from, and I know that any answers I get are through the lens of the victor. I will need time to see if you are a queen worthy of bending the knee to.”

“Your ancestor bent the knee to mine before,” Daenerys pointed out.

“Yes, and my grandfather and my uncle were killed by your father,” Robb said. He didn’t back down. Brienne was proud of how strong he seemed, even as he seemed kind. “Neither of us are our ancestors, your grace. Our wars are not their wars. Our deeds are not their deeds. My ancestor’s choices will have no bearing on mine.”

“No,” Daenerys agreed. She stood and walked to the balcony door. One of the dragons flew by it, off a ways, over the waves. Brienne watched it and tried to pretend that she wasn’t. Daenerys turned back to look at Robb, and Brienne could see that she was troubled. Frustrated, perhaps, that Robb wasn’t proving as easy as she thought he was going to be. Or troubled by something else, something deeper within. “I do not intend to rule by fear.”

“I am glad to hear that,” Robb said.

“My advisors want me to show strength. Some of my people advise mercy. But I cannot afford to look weak.”

Robb’s posture straightened slightly, but he still looked slumped to Brienne’s eyes. Slumped and exhausted. Tired of fighting. Tired of leaving home for wars he didn’t want to fight.

“What is it that you think will make you look weak?” Robb asked. “The north has declared their independence. They do not consider themselves a part of the seven kingdoms any longer. We rebelled against a corrupt king. As I said yesterday, we rose in part because of the betrayal of my house. I nearly died for it. My wife and my mother _did_. My child. All dead. My people suffered because of my mistakes, and yet they chose me to lead them yet again. You aren’t the only one who can’t afford to look weak.”

“It is the largest part of my kingdom,” Daenerys pointed out. Her tone was cool, though not yet hard. Robb’s tone was cool, too.

“It is the largest part of Cersei Lannister’s kingdom,” he replied. He rose to his feet and joined her at the door to the balcony. They both looked beautiful there, with the sunlight streaming in. “I came to meet you because I knew that I was fortunate to receive a first invitation, and because I knew that the second one would be a threat. I came to make sure that Tyrion Lannister would not try to lay claim to my sister’s hand, and I came to see you for myself, because I needed to understand. But I also came because I want to believe in you. I want to help you. Not as a lord of one of your kingdoms. Not as a man who has bent the knee to you. I want to help you because Cersei Lannister is not the ruler that Westeros needs. I believe that she needs to be removed from power. I will gladly join my forces to yours.”

“Without bending the knee,” she said.

“Without bending the knee,” Robb confirmed. “My people just put the crown back on my head. If I take it off again so quickly, it will be a betrayal of their choice.”

Daenerys nodded. This time she was the one who showed she understood the power play with a quirk of the lips, but she didn’t seem angry.

“It’s a starting point,” she said. “For our discussions.”

Robb nodded, and he glanced at Brienne. She hardly understood for what, and then he let out a short, sharp breath, and she realized that it had been for strength.

“There’s something else,” he said. He gestured for Daenerys to sit again, and she did, glancing briefly toward the door to make sure that Grey Worm still stood watch. Brienne glanced at her fellow guard again to find him watching her already. He looked thoughtful, this time, and she knew that he was measuring her up, trying to imagine how he would fight her. “You know of the Wall in the north?”

“Yes, of course,” Daenerys said.

“It’s difficult to explain, and I don’t know how to explain it in a way that will make you believe me. I hardly know what to believe myself, except that I trust the man who told me this. There is something coming from beyond the Wall. The dead have been rising. Corpses reanimated and compelled to fight against the living. The people from beyond the Wall, the Free Folk, ran from them. They raised an army and tried to cross over into our lands. They were let through by the Lord Commander of the Nights Watch, and most of them have joined their forces to mine. We have been preparing since I returned to my home, but we know we cannot win alone.”

“The dead?” Daenerys asked. Brienne couldn’t blame her for the incredulity in her voice, nor the concern in her expression.

“The dead,” Robb agreed with a weary sigh. “Another Long Night.”

Daenerys frowned in the direction of the door, as if she wanted to escape, or perhaps as if she wanted to ask for a second opinion, but eventually she turned back to Robb.

“I don’t know what to say to that,” she admitted. Robb laughed. It seemed to surprise Daenerys, and she smiled at him disbelievingly.

“I didn’t either,” he said. “But the man who told me, my cousin…he served as Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, until he was killed and brought back to life by the magic of a Red Priestess from Asshai. Among all the other news he was telling me when we reunited, the army of the dead seemed almost believable.” Daenerys did laugh, then, and Robb shook his head. “I would have thought it madness myself. I almost _did_. When he started telling me, I kept looking at my sister, seeing if she would break first. She was always the worst at keeping a prank going when we were children. She would always start to giggle and give it away. But she didn’t. That’s when I knew. And Jon…Jon wouldn’t lie to me.” He sobered suddenly. “Jon wouldn’t lie to anyone. Not about something like that. And that brings me to…the other thing.”

Brienne found herself half a heartbeat from taking a step forward. What was he thinking? But he was the king, and if he thought Daenerys needed to hear, then it was his place. Still. She _ached_ with a want to stop him. They hadn’t discussed this.

“You sound quite grim,” Daenerys said when it took some time for Robb to begin. He huffed out a laugh. Daenerys waited. Finally, Robb met her eyes. He looked very sincere like that, and it would have been a good play, except that Brienne was sure he wasn’t playing. It was just _Robb._ Kind, earnest Robb.

“Until recently, I believed my cousin Jon Snow to be my half-brother. My father’s natural son. My father had a reputation for honor, but he had betrayed my mother and fathered a son on some other woman when he was fighting in Robert’s Rebellion. He brought the babe back to be raised in our household, too. My mother forgave him eventually, but even after she did, Jon was a sore spot with her. She always distrusted him, but I think she was just…angry, still. It was misplaced anger. She couldn’t be angry with my father. She loved my father. But she could be angry with Jon. We never listened to her, growing up. Most of my siblings, anyway. Jon was always one of us. But when I was healing, recovering from my wounds at the wedding, my father’s friend told me that Jon wasn’t my father’s son at all. He’s the son of my father’s sister, Lyanna Stark.” Daenerys’s eyes were fierce on his. She understood immediately. Robb continued anyway. “And your brother. Rhaegar.”

“You’re certain?” Daenerys asked.

“Yes,” Robb replied. Daenerys blinked rapidly, and Brienne wondered if she was blinking back tears. That was always how _she_ tried to avoid them.

“Rhaegar had a son,” Daenerys said quietly. “I am not the only one left.”

“No,” Robb said. His smile was quiet and pleased. He had been nervous that telling her would be a mistake. Brienne could see that now. “My father knew that Robert would harm Jon, if he knew. Robert was bent on taking revenge on Rhaegar by wiping out his family, and my father knew that would mean Rhaegar’s son, even if the babe was also Lyanna’s. So he broke my mother’s heart to keep his sister’s secret, and he raised Jon without anyone ever knowing. His reputation suffered. His marriage suffered. But he would have done anything to protect Jon. And Jon is one of the best men I know. He has my father’s honor, and he is a devilish fighter, and he’s braver than anyone I’ve ever met. I…I wanted you to know. It may not make us allies yet. It may not make us trust each other. But you are family, in a way. Jon will always be my brother.”

He was looking at Daenerys with such an open expression, and Daenerys nodded. She almost reached for his hand on the table between them, but she thought better of it. She stood again, and she gave him a slightly watery smile.

“This was a good start,” she said. “I would like some time alone to…”

She didn’t finish the sentence, trailing off, but Robb nodded anyway. He bowed, and when Daenerys offered her hand, he kissed it. She seemed surprised, but she didn’t take her hand away, and she smiled at him afterward.

When they were again out in the hall, Grey Worm offered to show them back to the guest quarters. As they were walking, Robb arched his eyebrows at Brienne in question, and she lifted one shoulder. It had gone passably well. Robb stifled a laugh, and he made a face that showed his agreement.

At the entrance to the guest quarters, after Robb had already entered, Grey Worm stopped her with a gesture, and she turned to look at him.

“I would like to fight you,” he said. “There is a training yard.”

“Oh,” Brienne said.

“Please, Brienne,” Robb replied, and his expression was young and mirthful again. “I _need_ to see that.”

“Well, all right,” Brienne allowed. “Lead the way, I suppose.”

Grey Worm smiled again, and bowed, and led.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Gravity by Dirk Maassen


	27. Tyrion I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tyrion thinks of another way to try and keep Jaime safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to everyone reading and commenting! I meant to post yesterday, but there was a lot going on here, and i never got the chance! I may post twice today, if I find the time! We'll see
> 
> mostly because nothing really happens in this chapter oops

Jaime had spoken often, and at humiliating length, about the Maid of Tarth and her fighting prowess. Tyrion hadn’t been particularly interested in hearing about it.

He’d been sure she was a good fighter for a woman—Jaime was the best swordfighter in the seven kingdoms before he lost his hand. He wouldn’t have given such praise to just anybody. But Tyrion found it hard to imagine she was anywhere close to as good as Jaime said.

Jaime was an odd man. In a lot of ways, he was odder than Tyrion, despite what people thought when they looked at the two brothers. Even beyond the whole ‘fucking their sister’ thing, Tyrion had trouble understanding Jaime sometimes. He claimed to hate their family’s schemes and political maneuverings, but he went ahead and involved himself whenever they demanded it of him, aside from their father’s desire to see him married and serving as Lord of Casterly Rock. _That_ , he stayed steadfastly against, and frankly it was Tyrion’s least favorite thing about his brother. The thing that Tyrion desperately wanted for himself but knew he would never get, Jaime cared nothing for. Jaime had been raised for it, was given opportunity after opportunity to take it, and he threw every possibility away for the dubious reward of what lay between their sister’s thighs.

There was also a real oddness to the fact that, aside from Cersei, Jaime never fucked anybody. It was _only_ Cersei. Rare was the man with that kind of loyalty. Even Ned Stark had fathered a bastard. Jaime had fathered three, but he had never once strayed from his lover’s bed.

When Tyrion saw the Maid of Tarth fighting with Grey Worm in the courtyard, surrounded by onlookers, including the grim-faced young man who had become King in the North, Tyrion also saw another way in which his brother was one of the oddest men he’d ever known.

Jaime had not been exaggerating his companion’s skill. Tyrion had of course assumed he must have been. A good fighter…he didn’t doubt it. She was built for fighting. Anyone could see the muscles that she had cultivated. And she was monstrously tall, even beside his tall big brother. But there was so much nuance to fighting. Surely she could not have learned that, as well. Who would have taught her?

But watching her against Grey Worm…

She was remarkably fast for a big woman. And he could tell that she was an intelligent fighter as well by the way she watched her opponent. She didn’t let her guard down. Her eyes tracked his every movement, as his eyes did the same. He was even _smiling_. Tyrion could never get Grey Worm to smile! He had begun to think it was something that only Missandei could unlock. But no, there was a tiny, satisfied smirk at the corners of his lips. If _Grey Worm_ approved…

King Robb was laughing, and he clapped when Brienne dodged a strike that would have incapacitated a lesser fighter. Tyrion could imagine what Jaime would be saying if he was here.

Then again, maybe he couldn’t. The last time they spoke of her, Jaime had been oddly unsettled. She had been walking in the gardens, pacing restlessly, looking like a caged animal.

“She can’t stay here for much longer,” Jaime had said. He had been wearing his Kingsguard armor at the time. It was the day before Joffrey’s wedding, perhaps two, and Jaime had been wary.

“What do you mean?” Tyrion asked. “I thought you liked having her around to tease and mock. She makes a remarkably easy target.”

“Have you been speaking to her?” Jaime asked. He frowned when Tyrion arched an eyebrow at him.

“Of course I’ve been speaking to her. No one _else_ does, and I of all people know what it’s like to be ugly _and_ ignored.”

Jaime had frowned again, and he had turned to look at Brienne, as if to confirm for himself the truth of Tyrion’s words. Then he shook his head.

“You’re insufferable,” he had said. “Leave Brienne alone. She doesn’t need any of your japes. She’s the reason I’m still _here_. You should be thanking her. Blowing her kisses each time you pass her on the walk. Father should be showering her in gifts.”

“Marry the girl if you’re so fond of her. Then father _will_ shower her with gifts.”

“I don’t know who would kill me quicker for suggesting it: Brienne or our sister,” Jaime had laughed, though it was a false, tense kind of laugh. He glared down at Tyrion with an attempt as seriousness that looked odd on his so often unserious face. “I mean it, Tyrion. Leave her alone. Your attempts at humor won’t amuse her, and she’s been through enough.”

“Unusual for you to look out so closely for someone not in our family,” Tyrion pointed had out. Jaime frowned, as if he had previously been unaware of that. It was interesting, the way he sometimes seemed like he was almost _close_ to understanding why he was so fucking miserable all the time _._

“She protected me,” he said. It was still strangely sincere, for Jaime. “I owe her my life. I mean to repay the favor by keeping her as safe from our family’s claws as I can.”

“And that means me, dear brother?” Tyrion asked. Mocking, but truly a bit hurt. He wasn’t like the rest of their grasping family. He thought Jaime knew that, at least.

“Even you,” Jaime agreed. He laughed a little, bitterly. “Perhaps you most of all.”

He had said no more, and they had never spoken about the Maid of Tarth again. But here she was, and with a Lannister sword in her grasp. Valyrian steel.

 _Jaime, you fool_ , Tyrion thought. _You should have just married her._

Though it _did_ amuse him to think of their father furious that one of the priceless swords he had been so proud of had been gifted to an oversized ogre of a woman set loose by his favorite child. That she immediately used the steel to protect Sansa Stark of all people only added to the hilarity. What had Jaime been _thinking_? Surely he wasn’t so stupid he didn’t realize she would still have loyalty to the lady she had sworn to.

The amusement faded as he watched Brienne force Grey Worm to yield. The Unsullied man was grinning up at her, flashing more of a true smile than the challenging smirk had been. Brienne was breathing hard, but she was unbeaten, and she was smiling back down at him. Just like Grey Worm’s, hers was small and unremakable. These warriors were all creatures of restraint except for his brother. Another way in which Jaime was odd, he supposed.

He watched as Brienne helped Grey Worm up, as Robb Stark stood to the side and looked proudly at his bodyguard.

“She cut down three men,” Jaime had said once, giddy with the remembrance, and Tyrion had thought: _surely they were not very well-trained men_. Perhaps he had been wrong about that, too.

Tyrion was unsettled as he made his way back to the queen’s rooms. He was thinking of Jaime more often, lately. He had known all along that bringing Daenerys to Westeros was going to mean going against his siblings. Jaime had killed her father, and Daenerys did not seem to hate her father nearly as much as Tyrion had hated his. If he couldn’t talk her into understanding Jaime’s reasons, Jaime would die. In the abstract, that was an easy thing to swallow. If Jaime insisted on trying to stop Daenerys, if he insisted on trying to defend Cersei’s tenuous claim to the throne, then of course Jaime would have to be removed. But now that they were _here_ , in Westeros, Tyrion found that he hadn’t prepared nearly enough for the inevitability of a conflict with his brother.

He had dreamed of it the night before, so maybe that was why he couldn’t stop thinking about it today. Or maybe it was just that Stark looked so comfortable out there among the dragon queen’s people. The conversation in the morning had gone well. Yesterday, it had seemed like it would have to be a much more brutal conquering, but now…

The Starks and Daenerys together would make a formidable enemy for his sister. Three dragons would have probably done the job on their own, but there was always a risk. And an alliance with the north might push a few other regions into joining. The Vale, perhaps. Whatever was left of the Riverlands. Whatever was left of _anyone_ , really, after all the wars and betrayals and shifts of power.

If that happened, there was no question. Jaime would burn.

Jaime had burned in the dream. Refusing to bend the knee to a Targaryen ruler, he had stood defiant and unshaken until the flames began to roast him and he began to scream. Tyrion had lain awake after that, breathing heavily, trying to banish the panic and terror. He couldn’t stop smelling it. Hearing his brother’s pain. He couldn’t stop thinking of the little pony Jaime bought him for a nameday gift when he was young, and the way Jaime had smiled when he taught Tyrion to ride it. The wide brightness of his glittering grin. Jaime had always been there when they were children. But it was always Cersei who took him away. Always Cersei he would give preference to. It was too late to change that; Jaime was too loyal a creature to be persuaded to turn his back on their sister now.

Tyrion swallowed the remembrance of his childhood just as fiercely as he swallowed the remembrance of the dream. He hated to feel unsettled before speaking to Daenerys. It was unsettling enough speaking to her without other things on his mind.

* * *

When he entered the war room, she was waiting there. She was looking over the map table the way she often did. Her eyes tracing the rivers and climbing the mountain peaks. To someone who had been longing to return to Westeros for so long, Dragonstone must seem hopelessly bare and cold. He wished that he could tell her to get on her dragon and fly. Tour the country. Go see the Stormlands and the Riverlands and the Vale and the North. Fly past the Iron Islands and view the Red Keep, if only from a distance. See what she was fighting for. It would be a foolish risk, so he didn’t. Perhaps he might have if he was still young and foolish. He was trying to be a better Hand this time around. He served a better ruler. It was the least he could do.

“Your grace,” he said in greeting, and Daenerys smiled at him.

“Good morning, Tyrion,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m distracted. I had an…illuminating conversation with the king of the north today.”

 _The king of the north_. Daenerys hadn’t referred to Robb Stark as anything but Lord Stark before. It wasn’t a good sign for their hopes of his bending the knee if she was referring to him as _king_.

“Are we affording him titles now?” he japed, climbing up into the high-backed chair someone had dragged out of storage for him. It still smelled faintly of damp, but it allowed him to see the top of the table, so he didn’t mind.

“He has agreed to ally with us, though he will not bend the knee yet,” Daenerys said with a small smile. “It’s early days. Negotiation is a war, not a battle. You taught me that.”

“Did I? I deserve praise for that, then. Missandei tells me the conversation went well.”

Daenerys smiled and looked back down at the map again.

“It did,” she said. “I…well. It was a lot to process.”

Tyrion had no idea what she was referring to, but he nodded anyway. Daenerys liked to keep some things to herself. She would tell him when she was ready, or he’d have to prostrate himself before Varys to find out later.

The way things had been going lately, it would probably be the second.

“I was watching Stark and the Maid of Tarth in the courtyard,” he said.

“Yes, as was I. She fought well against Grey Worm. I have seen female fighters in my travels, but none quite as fierce as her.”

“No,” Tyrion agreed. “I thought my brother must have been exaggerating her prowess when we spoke of her, but he wasn’t. She would be a formidable ally to have.”

“Mm,” Daenerys said noncommittally. “Another reason to ally with the Starks, I suppose. That list is getting longer all the time.”

“She could also be loyal to my brother,” Tyrion said. Daenerys sighed. She didn’t like to hear things like this, he knew. The intricacy of politics bored her. That was why he had been such a good choice as her Hand; the intricacy of politics was his favorite part. But Daenerys grew restless here, and political maneuverings didn’t feel like _action_ to her the way it did to people like he and Varys. She wanted a cause to fight. She wanted an injustice to answer. She chased those liberating moments when her people loved her and there was nothing complicated to concern herself with. Not that Tyrion blamed her, but it was hardly a sign of a good ruler, and he often despaired of her.

 _She’s young, still_ , he tried to remind himself. But it was difficult when she so often looked at him like _he_ was absurd for suggesting something more tempered than burning all their enemies.

“All I have heard from anyone is that Brienne of Tarth is an honorable woman,” Daenerys said. “Is this not true?”

“I have no doubt it is, but…” Tyrion took a stab in the dark that he had to _assume_ was true. With Jaime looking the way he did, and Brienne looking the way _she_ did, and the way Brienne held that sword in her grasp any time she walked anywhere… “Love is a powerful emotion, and even the most honorable woman might not be able to stand against it.”

“Love?” Daenerys asked. “You believe the Maid of Tarth is in love with your brother? The _Kingslayer_?”

“Stranger things have happened. I’m serving the daughter of the king my brother killed. You’re opening negotiations with the grandson of the man your father burned. Our past deeds don’t always define us in the eyes of others.”

“She serves the Starks.”

“She carries a Lannister sword. A Valyrian steel sword, no less. Quite a gift to receive. You wouldn’t be nearly so incredulous if you had ever seen his face. He’s quite handsome, my brother. Handsomer than me, I’m told, though I personally don’t see it.”

“And your sister is said to be one of the most beautiful women in the Seven Kingdoms. Yet men stand against her all the time.”

“The Maid of Tarth was with my brother when he lost his hand, your grace,” Tyrion reminded her. “He saved her from rape, and she cared for him when he was ill, when the infection nearly took his life. Jaime was too embarrassed to tell me much, but he told me enough. And my brother can be charming when he isn’t an ass. His looks help him greatly in that regard. It would be easy enough for a maid like her to fall in love with a man like that. A roaring lion turned helpless kitten. Why not? She isn’t exactly conventional looking, and I know that she has never pleased any of the prospects her father had lined up for betrothals. She is the sole heir to a passably wealthy island, and still no takers. My brother can be sharp and unkind, but he respects her, and that’s more than most men have done.”

Daenerys was frowning at him, and he wondered if he had said too much.

“The more I hear of Westeros, the less I like it,” Daenerys mused. “Perhaps it’s not as bad as other places I’ve been, but…she is honorable, and a good fighter. I wish that was enough for her.”

“As do I, your grace. I don’t say any of this to disparage her.”

“Do you think she will be disloyal to us because of your brother? Is that it?” Daenerys asked. Tyrion shook his head.

“I only mean to say that her feelings for my brother might be useful. Good enough that she’s loyal to the Starks as long as the Starks are our allies. Less useful if something goes wrong. But if I remind Brienne of our connection, and if I convince her that we mean to see my brother safe…”

“Ah,” Daenerys said, smiling slightly. “I see your true aims here.”

“I’m merely suggesting an alternative.”

“I’ve told you before that your brother will receive a fair trial if he is taken alive. That’s all I can offer, Tyrion.”

“Yes, your grace,” Tyrion said. He tried not to grumble too badly, but he could tell that Daenerys heard it. She smiled at him. It was indulgent and a bit insulting, all things considered.

“Varys assures me that the Starks will be loyal once their loyalty is earned. That’s my goal now. I don’t want to make things more complicated than they need to be for the sake of appeasing your fear for your brother.”

She was looking at him very seriously. Sometimes, when she looked at him like that, he could see the ruler that she might be if she continued to learn. Often, it was when she was chastising him. He didn’t like to think about what that meant.

“Of course, your grace,” he said.

When he had been given leave to exit, he did. That conversation certainly had not settled his nerves any.

 _I tried, Jaime_ , he thought. It was a painful feeling, to fail one’s brother. Was this what Jaime felt every time he looked the other way or ignored some cruelty that Cersei had inflicted? Fresh off his embarrassment with the queen, Tyrion found himself hoping that it was.

 _I can’t fix your mess for you, brother_ , he thought. _You’re on your own now. Try not to fuck it up too badly._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is The Rains of Castamere by Tina Guo, which is definitely cheating but oh well


	28. Arya II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya and Sansa have a chat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey look at that! a fulfilled promise! Twice in one day!

Arya approached the spot where Sansa liked to stand: on the walk overlooking the training yard. She’d noticed that Sansa spent more time outdoors than she used to, and it was usually spent either here or on the battlements above, looking out at the snow. Quiet, blank, her eyes distant.

Arya didn’t like to admit to anxiousness about it, but it always made her a bit unsettled when she spotted Sansa out there alone. It was so…un-Sansa. They’d both changed a lot since they were last together, but sometimes the proof of it rattled her.

“I don’t know,” Jon said when Arya wondered aloud why Sansa seemed to need to be there. He’d sounded worried too, though he pretended not to be. “She’s different. From how she was.”

That was true enough. Sansa was steelier than she used to be, for one. She had a strength that reminded Arya sometimes of their mother and sometimes of their father. A way of speaking to people that made them feel heard and seen but not catered to. She used to be so _pleasant_ , all the time. It drove Arya mad, that she was so accommodating of everything. Arya had struggled and squirmed away every time someone tried to make her more like Sansa. More polite. More gentle. More ladylike. That wasn’t what she had wanted. And Sansa had been so _good_ at it. That was the worst part. She’d always made it seem _easy_ , and she made Arya feel stupid just by existing because _Arya_ didn’t think it was easy at all. Septa Mordane hadn’t been cruel about it, but she didn’t need to be. It just _stung_ , not being good at things that came so easily to Sansa.

But Sansa was different now. She was still polite, but the pleasantness had all been eroded away, leaving something colder in its place. Not _cold_ cold, not as icy as she probably thought she seemed, but _colder_. She listened to people, but she didn’t bend before them. She smiled at people, but it didn’t reach her eyes unless she was truly glad to see them. She’d had so much of her old self stripped away, layers of her peeling back until this was all that was left. The center of her. Still Sansa, but without the pretty armor that she used to wear. She didn’t trust that armor to protect her anymore.

Arya had always hated that armor that Sansa wore. She’d always liked Sansa better when she was yelling and screaming and fighting. It never took very much. Arya would just have to provoke her, and Sansa would flash through, past those careful layers of fake kindness. She was always so good about acting like things didn’t bother her, but Arya was good enough at bothering her to make her snap.

She didn’t want to bother Sansa anymore. Still, she had to wonder what Sansa would do if Arya got beneath her skin again. Somehow she doubted it would be the same as it used to. It probably wouldn’t feel very good, either.

She made her steps heavy as she walked towards Sansa, giving her approach away. Jon had been right that first day when he said not to sneak up on Sansa. Arya hadn’t, but she had seen the way Sansa got tense and white and shaken whenever someone approached her when she was unawares. She’d hold onto the folds of her dress afterward, and Arya hated it. She hated to see it. That physical response to fear that Sansa had learned because there wasn’t anybody around to protect her.

Sansa turned to see who it was. She grimaced and turned back away.

“Ugh,” she said. “Do you have to wear that?”

Arya laughed in Littlefinger’s voice.

“I don’t like it any more than you do,” she said. His voice was as slimy as the rest of him. Arya didn’t like wearing a lot of faces, but his was the worst. She could _feel_ him. The way his mind worked. She wanted to tear it off and burn it, but it was too useful, and she was strong enough to bear it. “He was a shit person. I’m glad you let me kill him.”

“I am too,” Sansa said, and she still wouldn’t look.

“But it’ll all be for nothing if his spies think he’s dead for real.”

Sansa sighed, braced herself, and then turned to look at Arya again, still grimacing. Arya knew that meant she agreed, though she wasn’t happy about it. That was fine. Arya wasn’t really happy about it, either.

After Bran told them everything that Littlefinger had done to their family, Sansa and Jon wanted to put him on trial or something. Kill him in front of all those Vale men with a proper explanation so that everyone would know what a snake he was. So they could get rid of him without losing any of their army. But Arya had talked Sansa into this instead. What good was being able to wear people’s faces if no one ever let you do it? And Littlefinger was useful. Already, in the week since it had happened, Arya had learned ten thousand things through Littlefinger’s network of spies that she never would have learned otherwise. They had gotten rid of the kitchen lady who was selling him secrets. They had sent soldiers to rescue the girls in the brothel who were only there because Littlefinger had _bought_ them. They'd swapped stablemasters because the old one had been squirreling food and supplies away for Littlefinger if he had to make his escape. Winterfell would be safer when all his little rats had been taken out of their positions. Sansa could complain all she wanted about how unsettling it was to see Arya in the man’s face, but they both knew it was a good idea.

Jon, though. Nobody hated it more than Jon. He’d gotten angry at Arya for suggesting it and then angry at Sansa for supporting it, and even now he was still all sullen and broody about it even though it was _done._ That _did_ bother Arya a bit, though she tried to hide it. If Jon wanted to be stupid, he could just keep avoiding her when she was dressed up as Littlefinger. It had been the right choice. Jon’s anger didn’t change that.

“He wasn’t as clever as he thought he was,” she said, because she knew that Sansa needed to hear it. Sansa was still wearing the tenseness and the anxiety that Littlefinger used to bring her. Arya could see the way she locked up every time she saw Arya approaching with his face. She always looked for a second like she thought he was still alive, until she remembered. It made Arya feel sorry for her, and she didn’t like that.

“No,” Sansa admitted quietly. “I suppose not. I thought it was going to take a lot more maneuvering to get to a place where we could remove him. I didn’t count on Bran.” She smiled a little at Arya. “And I _definitely_ didn’t count on you.”

Arya laughed, and she leaned against the railing beside Sansa in a way she knew Littlefinger would have done. It was satisfying to know that he would never do it again. Sansa was holding a scroll in her hands, twisting it idly between them.

“What’s that?” Arya asked, drawing her sister’s attention back down to it. Sansa hesitated, and Arya could see the way she forced herself to remember that this _wasn’t_ Littlefinger and she didn’t have to hold tightly to her secrets around Arya.

“It’s…it’s a letter from Jaime Lannister,” she said.

She wasn’t lying, obviously. Arya could see that even before Sansa showed the Lannister seal.

“Why is the _Kingslayer_ writing to you?” she asked. She couldn’t help but sound defensive, though she didn’t mean to. She didn’t want to, either. She wanted Sansa to know that Arya trusted her, but she couldn’t stop herself. Sometimes Sansa just made no _sense._ Sansa took a deep breath, and Arya couldn’t tell _what_ she was feeling.

“We write to each other,” she admitted. “We have been, for a little while. I didn’t think I would again.” She looked over at Arya. She hesitated, and then she said, with a half-smile, like she wasn’t sure how Arya would take it. “I think he’s in love with Brienne.”

Arya remembered Brienne. The Lannister lion on her sword. How fiercely she had fought with The Hound. Arya had been relieved when she learned that Brienne had been telling the truth about her quest. It was nice to know that Sansa had someone so brave protecting her against the Boltons. Made her feel a little silly for running off, too, but she was glad she’d done it. She needed to go to Braavos. Or maybe it was just easier to tell herself that. She probably could have learned to fight from Brienne, too, if she’d stayed. It just made the things that happened in Braavos easier to remember when she told herself that she’d needed to do it.

Then again, she would have never learned how to wear other peoples’ faces if she hadn’t gone to Braavos, and this Littlefinger thing would have been a lot more complicated. Better this way.

“If he’s in love with Brienne, he’s smarter than I thought he was,” Arya admitted. “But you always see fluffy romance in everything.”

Sansa snorted and looked down at the letter, shrugging one shoulder.

“Not anymore,” she said. “But even you would have to see it in this.” She sighed, and she tucked the letter away. It was fairly large, for a letter from their enemy.

“What do you write him about? Just to talk about Brienne?”

“Not always. That was why he wrote me at first, to see if she survived the battle. I wrote back to tell him she did, and then he replied, and now...maybe I wanted to feel less frightened of him, at first. Maybe that’s why it started.”

“Do you?”

“Feel less frightened? Yes. His letters are funny.”

“You don’t think _he_ wants to marry you too, do you?”

“No.”

“You think it’s true he fucked his sister?”

“Arya!”

“What? I’m just asking. I heard all kinds of stories, and that one seemed true. Then again, I heard lots of stories about everyone, and most of those were rubbish.” Including that one about their mother, Brienne, and Jaime Lannister in a cell in Riverrun, but she was hardly going to repeat _that_ one if just the _word_ ‘fucked’ made Sansa go all pink. “I was just wondering. Suppose Brienne’s a better choice. Doing it with his sister was probably a bad one.”

“Well, yes,” Sansa admitted with a small smile. She was looking at Arya the way she did sometimes. Kind of wondering, like she couldn’t believe Arya was with her. Glad to have her sister back, even when she was wearing Littlefinger’s face. It always made Arya feel a bit soft inside, which she hated. “But…yes. I…it’s true, about he and Cersei.”

_Maybe that’s why you like writing to him so much_ , Arya thought. _You understand him._ But she didn’t say it. Days ago she would have, maybe. Years ago for sure. But she felt differently now. She had seen too many terrible things to be cruel about this one.

“Why didn’t you stop writing him? You just said you were going to, but didn’t. Do you think it’s a trap? Do you think you _should_ stop? I can make you stop, if you want.”

Sansa laughed at her, which Arya liked enough that she didn’t point out that Sansa should be acting the same as she always acted with Littlefinger before. Quiet and blank and still.

“I didn’t think I wanted to anymore,” Sansa admitted. “Bran told me a lot of things, and it made me not want to write him anymore, even though Bran said I should. But I suppose I missed writing him, and I suppose I wanted him to know. I wanted to tell him what I knew, and I wanted him to explain himself. I wanted him to _know._ ” She deflated slightly, her shoulders slumping. “Of course he couldn’t even give me _that_. He was just…not himself at all, and now I have to worry about _him_ , too. On top of everything else.”

“You’re worried. About the _Kingslayer_.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call him that.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize you were so sensitive about the man who attacked our father.”

Arya thought for a second, unbelievably, that she had pushed her sister too far by saying it. Sansa flinched as if struck, and she gripped the railing in front of her. This was the Jon secret all over again. Something Arya could observe but not even begin to understand. _The Kingslayer_. Arya remembered him. Handsome and horrible and with a cruel, mocking smile. How was _he_ the man that wrote the letter that Sansa worried between her hands out of anxiety for him?

“Understanding doesn’t mean forgiving,” Sansa said, finally. “Bran told me that. But it helps with forgiving, I think. I know how far I would go to help my family, now. It’s easier to understand him than it was.”

“You sound like Bran. All mysterious and shit. Don’t _you_ start saying you can talk to crows now.”

“I won’t,” Sansa laughed. She was still wary, but she was hopeful, too. “And I can’t. _Unfortunately_. That might be useful.”

“Especially if _you_ were doing it, because you wouldn’t feel the need to be all vague about it,” Arya said with a snort.

Sansa smiled and said, “Bran also told me not to tell _you_ some things.” She looked quite smug about that, and it made Arya laugh, because she could tell that it wasn’t meant in any mean way. It was nice to laugh about things like this with Sansa. She wondered if their parents would be happy, if they could see them.

Well. Maybe not about the fact that Arya was wearing the face of one of the men who had gotten them killed. But aside from that.

“Bran’s still a shit,” she decided. “He’s just better at hiding it.” She didn’t know if that was true. It felt nicer than just accepting that he was going to be all blank and weird from now on. She didn’t want him to be like that. “You can’t keep secrets from me, you know.”

“I know,” Sansa said. “But this one isn’t my secret to give away. If Bran wants you to know, he’ll tell you.”

“Fine. Whatever. You’re welcome for murdering your enemy for you.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Outwitting him, being all clever and sneaking around and convincing him that you needed to talk to him _right away_ so he should come with me. Not a big deal. Not very helpful.”

“Arya,” Sansa groaned.

“Lord Baelish, remember? Stupid.” Arya smiled at her. She wanted to take this face off. “It’s funny. Everyone has a weakness. That’s one of the first things I had to learn, and it’s true. Even the strongest person. Everyone has that one thing, or that one person, they can’t resist. You were his. Did you know that?”

“ _Mother_ was his. I was just a convenient stand in. I look like her but was young and stupid enough to actually believe him for a time. He wanted me to be mother for him, but with all her fierceness stripped away. That wasn’t love.”

“No, it wasn’t. But it was still weakness. He wanted you too badly to be suspicious when I took him to that dark part of the castle and cut his throat. Even as he was dying, he seemed confused. Like he couldn’t understand why you weren’t there.”

“Arya,” Sansa warned. She was right. That was too much. Arya shrugged.

“It’s just weird, is all. I don’t think I’ve ever been someone’s weakness before. I was wondering how it felt.”

Sansa breathed out slowly. She stared down at the training yard, at the mud rapidly disappearing beneath the snow. More snow again. Lord Baelish had hated the snow, but Arya loved it. It was always a good excuse to take off Littlefinger’s face and be herself again. Anyone would believe he was locked away in his rooms, or sitting by the fire in the library, or just conveniently not around.

“I think I liked it at first,” Sansa admitted. “Because I just…I wanted _someone_ to care about me. I had a handmaiden who cared for me, I think. Shae. But she couldn’t help me get away. She couldn’t do anything to protect me. Father was dead, and I couldn’t get out of the city, and Littlefinger was _there_. When he took me to the Eyrie and Aunt Lysa was…well, it doesn’t matter. It felt good at first. It felt powerful. But he wanted too much, and I didn’t want it at all, and then I realized that it didn’t make me feel strong to be someone’s weakness. It just made me feel afraid, like I needed to protect myself from him more than anybody else. It would have probably been different if it was someone else. I don’t think Littlefinger knew how to love without destroying everything about it.”

“He didn’t,” Arya agreed. “You’re Jon’s weakness too, you know. And it isn’t like that with him.”

“We’re both Jon’s weakness. _Family_ is Jon’s weakness.”

Which was true, and it made Arya feel warm every time she thought about it. It wasn’t exactly what she had been talking about, but she supposed that was true. Family was her weakness as well. She supposed it was Sansa’s. Was Arya a weakness for Sansa? Probably. It made Arya feel much warmer than she expected. But that hadn’t been what she meant to say.

“It’s different with you,” she said.

Sansa looked at her, and Arya was confused by the expression on her face. She had expected Sansa to be _happy_ to hear it. Instead, she looked…

Afraid. She looked afraid.

“Arya,” Sansa said sharply. Another warning. Arya didn’t understand.

“What? It’s true. I don’t know what you’re so upset about. I know it’s exactly what you want to hear.”

Now Sansa reacted like Arya had slapped her, and she had gone even paler, the red spots of color on her cheeks disappearing beneath the icy chill. Before she turned to stalk away, Arya saw that her eyes had started to get wet with tears.

And, well. Arya felt guilty. Annoyed, at first, but that faded quickly. Or muted, anyway; there was still a bit of annoyance.

“Ridiculous,” she muttered, though her heart clenched to think of the way Sansa had looked at her, and then she headed back into the castle to take of Littlefinger’s face and find her sister. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Branscombe by Wovoka Gentle
> 
> i hope nobody's too disappointed with the direction this took? I could have dragged it out, but ultimately I just didn't care enough to lmao


	29. Robb V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daenerys receives word of the army marching on Highgarden

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Catch me studying the map of westeros and scouring reddit pages for estimates on how fast different armies in westeros could travel before yelling "this isn't REAL!" at myself and throwing the map across the room
> 
> listen you get what you get at this point lmao
> 
> Thank you to everyone reading and commenting! I am running abysmally late already but i wanted to get this up tonight!

Negotiations had been going well the past few days, after an awkward first few of he and Daenerys attempting to reach out to each other without giving too much away of themselves. There were still uncomfortable moments between them, and they had still been unable to agree on the important things that needed to be addressed. But they had talked of themselves, of their commonalities and their differences. Daenerys loved to hear stories from when he was a child. He always worried he was boring her as he told some tale of the mischief he had gotten up to, but he would look and see real mirth in her expression as she imagined all the things he was telling her. She’d never had a family like that. She loved to hear him tell of it.

And _he_ loved to hear her stories of traveling, of the things across the sea that she had seen. She showed him the art and the clothing and the weaponry. She introduced him to her people, and he spent hours in conversation with them, usually with Missandei translating for him. He couldn’t learn enough. Davos was always with him, always lightly disapproving and nervous that the famously reckless King of the North was going to overstep somehow, but Robb’s problem had never been in charming people. No, his problem as a ruler had been much simpler than that. He had been selfish. He had chosen his own heart above the needs of his kingdom, and he wouldn’t do that again.

Brienne worried, too, and Robb understood why. She watched the way he smiled at the dragon queen. She watched the way he kissed her hand after their meetings, and the way that Daenerys always colored a bit when he did.

“You worry that I’m in danger of losing my heart again,” he pointed out once as they stood on the balcony of their quarters and watched the dragons diving and playing over the waves. Brienne only shrugged, but he knew it was true.

Robb wasn’t worried, but he made sure to be as correct as Brienne and Sansa and probably Jon would want him to be. He was never rude to her. He was never demanding. He exchanged frequent letters with Jon about the Night King, and he showed Daenerys the answers. When Jon mentioned the effectiveness of Dragonglass, Daenerys mentioned the Dragonglass mines beneath the castle, and she offered to add it to their negotiations. He thanked her, and they smiled at each other, but he was always careful.

Talisa still smiled at him in dreams. He wanted to tell that to Brienne. Remind her that he was in no danger of losing his heart again. It had already been lost. How could he possibly lose it a second time? He wasn’t built for another love like that. He couldn’t do it. Not to himself. Not to Talisa. Not to his people, who would hate him if they thought he was in danger of failing them again.

It wasn’t so bad a thing, to connect with someone, though. He and Daenerys weren’t necessarily _similar_ , but they had experienced enough similar things that she was easier to talk to than he had anticipated. Ever since that first day, when they had been so awkward and formal with each other, they had moved closer to understanding each other, and that could only be a good thing. He knew that she was beginning to trust him. She had asked him a lot about Jon, and through his letters she was beginning to have an understanding of this man who was her nephew. Robb knew he was technically not a prisoner here—she never told him he couldn’t leave—but he also knew that he couldn’t go back north without securing some kind of alliance, and he was glad that he had managed to find a way past her defenses _and_ his own at the same time.

* * *

She called a meeting of her advisors early one morning, and Robb and Brienne and Davos were all invited to come along. By the time they arrived, Daenerys was pacing around the war table, glaring at it. Varys was standing near the back of the room, and Tyrion was sitting beside Daenerys, in the middle of trying to explain something.

“If we gather my forces _now_ , will we reach Highgarden in time?” Daenerys asked.

“If we sail them, perhaps. My source says they’re moving slowly, but…it’s still more likely we’d catch them on the way _back_.”

Daenerys nodded. She examined the table again.

“Is Dorne prepared to send aid to Highgarden?” she asked. Tyrion made a considering expression.

“I believe so,” he finally said. “They might not like it.”

“They don’t have to like it. I need the Lannister forces delayed. Varys?”

“I’ll send a raven,” Varys replied.

“We sail for Highgarden, then. We must be there before it falls.”

“It’ll be close,” Tyrion warned her. “And without the Greyjoys, our fleet is weaker than it ought to be.”

“It’s still fast, isn’t it?” Daenerys asked, one eyebrow arched. “That’s all I need for it to be.”

Tyrion nodded, apparently recognizing a losing battle when he faced one. Daenerys walked around the table until she stood in front of Robb and Davos.

“I understand you were a smuggler,” she said with a small, sly smile.

* * *

Davos went with the others to make preparations for the trip. Daenerys and Robb were left alone, with only Brienne and Grey Worm at the door. Outside it, this time. That felt like progress.

“I won’t ask you to fight,” she said. Her languid grace was gone, replaced with a ferocity and anticipation for the battle to come that he recognized in an echo of the man he was before that cursed wedding. “I know you didn’t come here for that. But if you wish to see what kind of queen I will be, you should come with us.”

Robb tried to imagine what Sansa would advise. He thought it likely she would say to stay out of the dragon queen’s business until they knew for sure that she was going to be a worthy ally. But Sansa wasn’t here, and even if Daenerys didn’t turn out to be a worthy ally, he thought that saving Highgarden from Cersei Lannister was a worthy cause.

“I haven’t fought in a real battle since I was injured,” he admitted quietly. He traced the path they would take around the south of Westeros to get to Highgarden. It seemed an impossible distance, but a fleet of ships could move faster than men on a march, especially when those men were delayed by forces from Dorne.

“You don’t have to fight in this one,” Daenerys advised. “Tyrion won’t be fighting either. Nor will Varys. They will watch from a distance.”

“I’m not one for watching,” Robb admitted. “I want to fight.”

What better way to prove his use to her, after all? He knew he was a fierce fighter, and his training with Brienne had made him still fiercer. Besides, his willingness to help her without a formal alliance might make it easier for her to trust him when the time came, and that was what was really important. Dragonglass was good. They would need it in the war against the Night King. Dragonfire would be better.

“Then you’ll fight,” Daenerys said. She was looking at him with something sparkling in her gaze that Robb could not help but respond do. He was glad Brienne was outside the door. He didn’t move toward Daenerys, and he wouldn’t, but he felt something inside him call out to something inside her. A foolish want. She was beautiful. That was all it was. “And afterward,” she said. “We’ll speak more about my nephew, and about the Night King.” She smiled slightly. “Do you know how fast my dragons can fly?”

“No,” Robb admitted with a small smile.

“Neither do I, truly. I’d like to find out. We could be in Winterfell in a day’s time, I’m sure.”

Robb had only seen the dragons from a distance, but he smiled at the thought. They were fearsome beasts, and he knew he didn’t want to see one when its mother was not present, but he would like the chance when she was.

“If only direwolves could fly,” Robb said. “I could have Jon come down here.”

Daenerys laughed. Clear and full at the thought. It faded slightly when she looked back down at the map.

“If only I had a thousand dragons and winged direwolves to get my people to Highgarden,” she said. “We must hope the wind is with us. Varys says it will be.”

“He can tell the weather, now?”

“So he says,” Daenerys allowed with a small smile. “I suppose we have no choice but to trust him. I cannot abandon my allies now. I have few enough of them.”

Robb nodded. He couldn’t tell if she wanted affirmation that he considered himself her ally, but he wouldn’t say it, regardless. He did. More and more, he found himself liking the dragon queen. But he had to be smarter than he was before, or else this second chance at kingship meant nothing.

* * *

He met Brienne in the hall, and they walked to their quarters to prepare. They didn’t speak until they were back there, and then he quickly gathered supplies to write to Sansa and Jon and update them. Their own updates to him were sparse and often contained little or no new information, and he knew that was wise, considering they had no idea what his situation was. Still, he wished for more news. He hoped that this letter would set Sansa’s mind at ease, at least. She may not like his choice, but she would value the explanation, and perhaps she would be more open in her next letter to him.

When the letter was done, he tucked it into his jacket for safety. He would rather see it away himself. He had no doubt that Varys would find some way to glean its contents regardless, but there was no reason not to make the man work for it.

He faced Brienne, who was standing by the window and watching the beach below as it teemed with activity.

“You need not fight, you know,” Robb said. Brienne turned to look at him, and he had to laugh at the affronted expression on her face.

“I know my duty,” she reminded him. “I swore an oath.”

“Yes, and it’s easy to say those words.”

Brienne knew his mind better than she used to, and she did not bristle or get angry when she would have before. She only shook her head.

“You have nothing to fear from me,” she said. “I have known this day was coming. If I truly feared it, I would have asked to stay behind in Winterfell. Did I?”

“No,” Robb admitted. “And it isn’t your loyalty I fear. But it’s one thing to have the right intentions. It’s another entirely to carry them out.”

“I know that, as well.”

“I suppose you would. I lost a crown once for love, you know.”

“A love returned. We’ve had this conversation before. It’s different.”

“The man gave you a blade and a suit of armor even knowing that you would use them both to defend his family’s enemies. Perhaps it isn’t love, but it’s something. Regard. Respect.”

“What is it you want me to say?”

“I _want_ you to be careful.”

“I’m not a queen,” Brienne pointed out. Maddening in her confidence. Or perhaps it wasn’t the confidence that was so maddening. Perhaps it was the resignation that irked him. She spoke like someone who already understood the outcome. “I have nothing so precious as a crown to lose.”

“You have your life,” he said. “Is that not precious? It is to my family. It is to me.”

He had not meant to say so much, but it wasn’t untrue. She stared at him as if expecting some joke to follow it, but she wouldn’t find one. Not in his expression. Not in his tone. Not in his intentions. She should have known this by now, but he understood Brienne better than he used to. He knew how little she trusted others when it came to knowing her own worth. When she saw that he was serious, her eyes glimmered. She ducked her head and nodded at him. She couldn’t speak for several moments, and he felt his own eyes welling in response.

“I swore no vows to you,” she said. “But I swore them to your sister. To guard her back. Beyond them, beyond what I have chosen as my duty, I would choose your family. It has been an honor to serve you, and I will do whatever it takes to continue to serve you in the future.”

Robb nodded, relieved and saddened both. He believed her. He was ready to fight beside her. He knew he could count on her.

Perhaps it would be better for her if Robb ordered that she remain behind, but he knew that she wouldn’t thank him for it, and he knew that he couldn’t do it to her. He didn’t want to punish her for feeling too much for a man she should not have. That didn’t serve anyone.

Robb didn’t trust as easily as he used to. But he would trust Lady Brienne with anything. With his life. With his sister. With the future of his house. He just wished he wasn’t risking her heart in the process.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is In the Beginning by Sean Redmond
> 
> there was a bunch of banter about the sword that I cut out of abject paranoia about everyone's unanticipated Robb + the sword feelings so let's add that to the list of ways this story is making me crazy! listen the sword is sworn to his family and Robb has bigger fish to fry! I'm sorry! Im just a dummy trying my best and I don't particularly care about that!!!


	30. Sansa VII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa and Arya have a conversation in the crypts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's gonna be another two-chapter day today folks! I really want to get to Highgarden, and after my oil change this morning I should have time to sit down and work on my edits of the last 3rd of the story for the first time in DAYS! So here's the first chapter, a bit of a lead-in.
> 
> Thanks to everyone reading and commenting! I'm going to sit down today and catch up on some comments! That's a promise!

When Sansa was young, she was afraid of the crypts. She was afraid of the grim-faced Stark kings and their swords. She was afraid of the older statues because they were worn down and broken in places, and it made her think of maimed ghosts wandering the crypts at night. Robb and Jon and Theon used to play pranks down there, too, so she never went unless she knew that they were away. The time Jon covered himself in flour and pretended to be a ghost was seared too deeply into her memory.

The one thing she liked in the crypts, before, the one bright spot, was the statue of Aunt Lyanna. She was beautiful down there among all the dour men and their stony expressions. Lyanna was uplifting, light. Sansa used to ask her father if it was a good likeness, and he had smiled and said that stone could never capture Lyanna as she was, but that the artist had done his best. Sansa had liked that answer, though she knew the question made her father sad. He missed his sister. He was sad that his children had never gotten to know her.

How different would everything have been if Lyanna had survived? Would she have stayed in Winterfell and raised Jon as their cousin instead of their half-brother? Would she have lived in the Red Keep with him? Would Rhaegar have married her and legitimized Jon? She didn’t know. She hoped not. That hardly seemed fair to Princess Elia, although maybe Princess Elia would be alive and back in Dorne. Sansa used to think that being set aside was the worst thing that could happen to a queen, but she knew better than that now.

If Lyanna lived, Jon would have had a mother. Her own mother was never much of one, she knew. Not to Jon. Catelyn’s energies were all for her own children, and at best she felt resentful of Jon for taking up her husband’s energy in even the smallest ways. Sansa closed her eyes as she sat before Lyanna’s statue. She felt herself growing smaller. She had worshipped her mother. She still loved her mother, but she knew so much more now than she used to, and it was difficult to sit before the statue of Aunt Lyanna and justify another mother’s failures.

_I’ll protect him_ , she promised the statue. _I’ll keep him safe for you. I’ll make sure he knows he’s loved._

It was the least she could do. It was the most she should do, too, no matter how badly she wanted to do more, and no matter how much her broken mind and her wasted heart told her differently.

She heard the quiet footsteps behind her, and she knew that it was on purpose. Arya never made noise when she didn’t mean to. Sansa turned and looked at her, grateful when she saw her little sister’s face and not the one that used to belong to Baelish.

Arya looked up at the statue of Lyanna, and then she sat beside Sansa, close enough to press their arms together. She always sat this close when they were children, before Sansa started snapping at her to “get _off_ , Arya”. Sansa pressed closer now so Arya would know she was welcome.

“I’m sorry,” Arya said.

“That’s a first.”

“Shut up. I mean it.” Sansa reluctantly looked at her, and Arya was looking back. Her expression was regretful, and Sansa sighed and shifted so she could drape her cloak over Arya’s shoulders, covering both of them. Arya never seemed cold, but it was cold down here, and Sansa wanted an excuse to be closer. “I forget sometimes. Forget that you aren’t my enemy anymore.”

“We were never enemies,” Sansa laughed. “Don’t be so dramatic.”

“I’m not! We were enemies. Not like _proper_ enemies, but you know. For little girls.”

“Right,” Sansa continued to chuckle. When Arya first came back, Sansa had been so wary, almost afraid of her little sister, not knowing what Arya had become. Or perhaps knowing and _worrying_ , because Arya’s new skills were unknown and terrifying. But she was still Arya. She still called too many things “stupid”. She still scowled in the same old way. Her nose still scrunched up when she was thinking too hard. She was Arya, and Sansa loved her, and she despaired of her, and she laughed more often than she used to around her. She and Arya had both changed, and it felt sometimes like they might be able to get along like this, if only they tried a little harder. Better than they used to get along, anyway.

“I meant it when I said I was sorry,” Arya grumbled. “I shouldn’t push things the way I do. I just want to understand.”

“You don’t have to understand anything,” Sansa said. “I wouldn’t want you to. There’s nothing _to_ understand. It doesn’t make sense.”

“What do you mean it doesn’t make sense?” Arya asked. “You love him, don’t you?”

“Of course I love him. I love all of you. The other stuff…he was the first man who’d been kind to me in so long. Maybe that’s all it was. It just got stuck there. It’s because of Cersei. It has to be.”

“I don’t know how to fix it,” Arya said. She sounded so like a child for a moment that Sansa tightened her arm around her.

“Neither do I,” she admitted. “I don’t know that you can. I don’t know that anyone can except for me, and I don’t know how to. Everything that’s happened to you…don’t you sometimes feel changed in a way you don’t like?”

“Yes.” Arya’s answer was quick, and she looked away, back down at the darkness and the line of statues. “All the time.”

“We just have to keep going. Father and mother would have wanted us to.”

“And Aunt Lyanna,” Arya said with a smile.

“And Aunt Lyanna,” Sansa agreed. “I’m sorry I keep running away. I’m just trying to forget it all, and talking about it doesn’t help.”

“I don’t know that it’s something you _can_ forget. But I’ll try to stop mentioning it.”

Sansa smiled a little. She supposed that was the best she could hope for. Arya had always been meddlesome. She probably thought it was as simple as finding Sansa an appropriate man to swoon over, or maybe just training her out of her feelings the way Arya tried to teach Nymeria to fetch things for her. Just _try_ hard enough, she probably thought. Try hard enough and the feelings will go away. As if Sansa hadn’t already _been_ trying.

“We have to protect each other now,” she said. “We have to protect _Jon_. That’s what we should be focusing on. The Northern Lords are placated for now, but they don’t like that he’s half Targaryen, no matter how many times we remind them that he’s also half Stark. Jon didn’t want Robb to legitimize him, but he _should_. They keep asking me to ‘do something about it’, whatever that means, and Jon keeps asking if he should leave, and Bran…” Sansa shook her head. “Well. Bran is Bran, now. I don’t know _what_ to do about him.”

Arya snorted her agreement, and they lapsed into a comfortable silence. Sansa used to be so afraid of these crypts, but she felt safe here now. Arya was at her side. The candles were nowhere close to burning down. She could feel her family with her. This was where she belonged.

Upstairs, she had her people to deal with. The smallfolk and the food shortages. The lords and their whispers about Jon. _Jon_ and his whispers about Jon. She had ravens from Robb and Brienne and Davos to read. She had that long, maudlin, distressing letter from Jaime Lannister to think about and maybe finally answer. There was so much commanding her attention, but not here. Here, it was just her and Arya and the beautiful statue of the aunt she never knew.

“You know, _she_ fell in love with someone she wasn’t supposed to, too,” Arya said suddenly. Quietly. “You should take Brienne down here one day. Maybe Aunt Lyanna will help her.”

Sansa made a noise of acknowledgement, understanding of course that Arya wasn’t really talking about Brienne at all. She was trying to help.

It hit too close to home, anyway. Falling in love with someone you weren’t supposed to. In a way, Sansa had done that with Jaime Lannister. Not _love_ , love. Not romantic love. But she hated how much she had come to care for him through his letters that meant nothing, and how much her anger felt like a void inside her now. Her last letter to him had been biting. She told him exactly what she had learned from Bran. His reply had been long, rambling. Oddly disconcerting, because it was easy to read his distress. He asked for no forgiveness. He offered no excuses. He said what she already knew: that he had always done everything for Cersei.

_I don’t want to anymore_ , he had written. _I didn’t want to then, but I did it anyway, because I had to save her. That was all that mattered. Making sure that she survived. That was the only thing that I knew how to do. Perhaps it still is. I march to Highgarden on Cersei’s behalf. Do you truly think this is what I wish for? I wouldn’t have you think that of me, at least. Even if you hate me for every other reason, even if you hate me because I am too weak to stop her when I know I should, know how much I regret it, and all the other deeds I have done before it._

It would have been easy to hate Jaime Lannister once. It _was_ easy to hate him once. Perhaps it would still be easy to hate him if Bran hadn’t talked to her so intently about it. It was clear that for some reason Bran wanted her to care for Jaime Lannister still, and though she wouldn’t pretend to understand that, she knew that Bran had good intentions. It was permission to forgive an act that had crippled him, but Sansa didn’t want it. She didn’t want to forgive any more. She wanted all the horribleness to end.

She would write Jaime back. She hardly understood why. Perhaps it was selfish. Perhaps it was only that she wanted so badly to have a person to count on. A friend, even if it was only through letters, and even if he was still technically their family’s enemy.

Or perhaps he was one of the only other people she knew who’d had feelings for his sister like the ones that she found herself now having for Jon. As distasteful as it was. As horrifying as it was. She knew that he was one of the only people who might understand.

_Perhaps_ , she told herself sometimes. _Perhaps we can help each other stop._

Maybe that was what Bran had been thinking. Maybe that was why Bran wanted her to forgive him. Perhaps Bran, like Arya, was only trying to help Sansa fix whatever it was that had broken inside her.

Arya was looking at her. Sansa could tell. She didn’t want to look back. She didn’t want to try and guess whatever it was that was on Arya’s face.

“You keep telling Jon to stay,” Arya said at last. Her voice was careful. Too careful. Sansa braced for it. Arya snuggled closer, like a promise not to say anything too cruel. “Don’t you think it would be easier for you if he left?”

“No.” It was Sansa this time whose answer was so quick. She shook her head. “No,” she said again. “I don’t want him to leave. It doesn’t matter how odd I feel about it, or how uncertain these feelings are. I don’t want him to leave. I want him to be happy. He can pretend as much as he wants to that it wouldn’t hurt him to leave, but I know better than to believe that. He wants to be here, with his family. I wouldn’t ever make him go away just because it might make things _easier_ for me. It wouldn’t, anyway. It isn’t just the bad parts of me that love him.”

She could hardly believe she said that aloud. She expected Arya to mock her for it; it sounded ridiculous, and they weren’t like that, she and Arya. They didn’t share those kinds of things. But Arya was looking at her again, curiously. She nodded.

“All right,” she said. She rested her head on Sansa’s shoulder, and she didn’t try to talk again.

Sansa felt frustrated again. She always felt frustrated, lately. She wanted her mother back. She wanted Robb back. She wanted Arya and Bran to be back to how they were before. She wanted her own feelings for Jon, whatever they were, to leave her in peace. She wished Lyanna was still alive to give him the love that Sansa wanted to give him. She wished his wildling lover was still alive, too. She wished for a million things. She wished more than anything for a person that she could trust completely. Someone who understood her. Someone who would not look at her now and think her broken and disgusting. She couldn’t even count on herself for that anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Alone in the Dark by Will Cookson
> 
> yet again I am posting this chapter literal minutes before I have to rush out for an appointment, because I have no concept of time management!


	31. Jaime IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The dragon queen's forces attack the Lannisters at Highgarden.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been pretty open about my anxiety generally and about this story SPECIFICALLY, so it feels only fair to tell you all that this is the chapter that has given me the MOST dread. It is also, weirdly, my favorite chapter in the whole story, and is the event that is really the only reason this story got written! So I hope you enjoy??

_Cersei was right. I am a fool._

Jaime swung his left arm, but his aim was imperfect. He dodged another blow from the man he was fighting. His own blade landed only a glancing slash on his opponent’s armor, but another one of the Lannister men was there to take over, crashing in. It was the fifth time that had happened. His men rallied around him, pushing him back. Trying to get him out of the fighting. He wanted to take his sword to them himself.

_I can fight. Let me fight._

He had been wanting to fight for weeks. The march down the Ocean Road had been plagued by Greyjoy ships and the raiding parties that went with them. He split his force near Old Oak, and he led half his men to cross the river at Goldengrove. He wanted to approach Highgarden from two sides at once: the Ocean Road and the Rose Road. Randyll Tarly was already leading a force from Horn Hill, having been convinced by Cersei to stand against Daenerys Targaryen, and so that cut off the southern approach. There should not have been any surprises.

Except Dornish fighters had plagued his men ever since he reached the Rose Road, and ravens from Tarly spoke of the same problem. Dorne stepping in to defend _Highgarden,_ of all places. They attacked and then retreated again, over and over, taking minimal losses and wearing the Lannister army down. Jaime should have turned his army back when he had the chance: his men were angry now, and they wanted to press forward and take the castle. There was nothing to get a man’s blood up like an annoying opponent, and that’s what the Dornish were.

The Lannister army had struck back against the Dornish as much as they could, but the enemy soldiers hadn’t been looking to _engage_. They had looking to wound, delay, sabotage. More than one morning had been wasted in repairs to carts that had been mysteriously disabled in the night, or in tending to horses that had been let loose or lamed.

Still, Jaime had marched on. They were his sister’s orders. It was for her, and for them, and for the Lannister house.

_What Lannister house? It’s only the two of you now._

_Isn’t that all that matters? Isn’t that what you always said? Then why aren’t you happy?_

_You’re a fool. A golden fool, just like Cersei._

They had finally begun the approach to Highgarden when they’d seen the army waiting for them. Dornish and Dothraki and men with Highgarden colors. Men in armor he didn’t recognize, and men in armor he unfortunately _did_. An entire host, and they stood between the Lannisters and Highgarden.

The screams had started from behind them: more Dothraki, riding in. Cutting off his escape.

And so Jaime had fought, as much as his men would let him. They seemed to be bent on standing between he and his targets. The valiant protectors of their maimed commander. A blackness had settled over Jaime’s shoulders early, and it did not seem like to lift.

_Why_? he asked himself for every man he killed. Why, when it was so plainly hopeless? His body fought anyway. _Let me die with sword in hand, at least._

Smoke from the ridge ahead was making it impossible for him to see anything. The Dothraki riders who had appeared in front of them on the Rose Road had set fire to anything they could. Dothraki on horses, cutting through the front lines of his army as he had just shouted them into formation. They set their fires and fired their bolts and swung their curved swords, and it was all Jaime’s men could to do repel them, drive them back.

Then more of them came. And behind them, the footsoldiers.

Jaime had never seen so many people in one army before. The dragon queen sent the whole of her force, it seemed, to meet his on the road to Highgarden. His men from the Ocean Road were approaching from the west, but it wouldn’t be nearly enough to help. If they were smart, they’d turn back to Casterly Rock and leave Jaime’s force to be captured.

Cersei hadn’t thought to equip him with an army that could fight against one like this. She had been unconvinced of the threat that Olenna Tyrell posed, and she had insisted that too many men remain behind to guard her and her city.

_Fool. You knew it wouldn’t be this simple. You let her talk you into listening, but you_ knew _she was wrong._

He blocked another strike and turned it on his foe. The man went down quickly after that. It was his first unaided kill of the battle. All his men who called him cripple around their campfires and snickered about his once-legendary prowess. He wanted to show them. He wanted them to see. But the fighting continued. There was no time for that.

The Unsullied were as fierce as he had expected. He could hardly keep up with them. His men were all too eager to jump in and take the chance, and some of them fared better than he would have, but many of them simply died in his place. His missing right hand throbbed with the sensation of a clenched fist. If only. _If only._ It longed to grip his sword and swing it the way he remembered. He would take on this entire army himself if he was whole.

He lunged past a soldier’s blindspot and pierced the man’s back with his blade. Another attacked him, and he ducked and spun and kicked the man’s leg from under him. His golden hand caught another blow, and he used the distraction to stab his attacker through the gut.

_I can still fight._

_No less a fool, but I can still fight._

There was no chance. He could see that plainly. As a younger man, that would have made him fight all the harder. He would have longed to prove himself wrong. No chance? What were _chances_ when you fought the way he had, once? But he wasn’t that man any longer. He was older and grayer and he didn’t care any longer about what they said about him. They would not say he fought valiantly. They would perhaps say he fought well, but it would be begrudging. It would be _for a cripple_. He didn’t care. He didn’t care. He only wanted to survive.

_Why?_

The question startled him this time, and he pushed it away. There was no time for that. _Why?_ Because he had to. Cersei needed him to. He needed to survive. _Why?_ He needed to win this war for her.

_Win this war? Why?_

For Cersei. For Cersei. _Why?_ She promised that things would be different this time.

_Do you want them to be different?_

He roared and swung and swung and hit blade and gut and armor and the exposed softness of skin under arms and at the throat. His blade cut through metal and men alike. _Widows Wail._ A gift from his sweet sister before he left Kings Landing. Granted with a sneer instead of a smile. His son’s sword. What a fucking bastard Joffrey had been. A king Jaime would not have been glad to follow.

_Too like his mother?_

_Shut up, Jaime._ The smoke was stinging in his eyes. It was the Whispering Wood again, but this wasn’t fog. This was fires lit to blind his men, to keep them from firing their siege weapons at the dragon queen’s dragons. His blood sang. Pumped. His heart beat harder. Dragons. If she had brought dragons…

_Please, let that have been a story. Just a clever story._

One man almost managed to get his sword on flesh, but Jaime danced out of the way. He may not have been as skilled with his left hand as he was with his right, but he still had the right instincts. He could still _avoid_ their blades.

_Why?_

_Do you even know where you are?_

He was deep within himself, and he wanted to struggle out, but he was afraid that the despair would take him if he did. He was afraid _why_ would become too loud a question if he heard it unsupported by the safe place within him. That bridge over the stream, where Brienne laughed and toyed with him instead of sneering _Kingslayer_.

_Why_ was getting louder anyway.

His men around him were fighting and dying and yielding and being struck down anyway by men who didn’t understand or didn’t _care_. The smoke was in his lungs. He could hardly see anything. At every moment, he expected to hear a dragon. What would a dragon even sound like? He didn’t know. What was he even fighting for? He didn’t know that, either. _Cersei. Cersei needs you. You’re fighting for Cersei._

_Why?_

Cersei. Cersei had blown up the sept and killed all those people. Cersei was losing her grip on their army, and losing her grip on reality. She had lost all three of her children, of _their_ children, and maybe it was that which drove her to this point, but maybe this had been coming for a long time. Maybe it was too much. All the pressure. All the loss. All the fear.

_She needed you, and you weren’t there. She needs you again. You can’t abandon her this time._

She didn’t _need_ him. Even he wasn’t so great a fool as to believe that. She hadn’t ever _needed_ him. She thought she did, but perhaps he just made things easier. He was hers to control. That wasn’t need. _That wasn’t love._ He was knocked on his back by a passing Dothraki on a horse, and one of his men jumped to the gap that he left. He staggered to his feet, and the smoke cleared with a sudden gust of wind.

It was the Whispering Wood. It was the Whispering Wood again, and only five men stood between he and Robb Stark.

_Robb Stark._

The smoke was in his eyes. He blinked it out. Robb Stark was still there.

He was bleeding from a cut in his forehead. His hair was stained even redder with blood, and his curls swung as he spun. He fought better than he used to, and he had been formidable before.

He was here.

In the Whispering Wood, Jaime had been a demon of a man, possessed by the need to get to Robb Stark and end the war. Cut the boy down and hobble the north. Get them back in line so that he could return to Kings Landing where he belonged. He had cut through everyone he could. He would have cut through as many people as he needed to. He still thought they were mad for taking him alive instead of putting him down like the rabid beast he had become. It had amused him, trussed up in the middle of the camp, to hear their whispers as the legend of his skill spread further by men who had been there, who had seen with their own eyes what an unfettered monster could achieve.

He would have done anything to get to Robb.

Now, he stood frozen, his sword clutched in his hand. Robb Stark stood there, fighting. Robb Stark on this battlefield all the way across the continent from where he should be. It was not a mistake. It was not some mirage. Robb Stark was here, and that meant that the north had allied with the dragon queen. No wonder there were so many fucking people in this army. All the men in fucking Westeros had joined it.

Cersei had lost. She would refuse to accept it, but she had lost. Their one chance had been if the north could not make common cause with the dragon queen, and Jaime had been sure that the Starks and their fool honor and their personal grudges would keep them from aligning with the daughter of the man who had burned their former lord alive. Even if it was against Cersei, he thought, surely they would not forgive.

Another Dothraki swiped at him, and Jaime fought him off, but still Robb Stark was in his sights.

_Your chance to end the war_ , he thought.

Sansa Stark’s last letter to him burned in his mind. All of Sansa Stark’s letters. She loved her fool brother, didn’t she? She loved both her brothers, and Jaime had read and reread her last letter with its dripping hate, and he felt like a fool child and an old man at once, losing a loved one for his own faults. He couldn’t…

_To end the war…_

_A war_ you _started. You pushed a boy out a window, and all the rest followed._

_To end the war._

_You’d never beat him. He wouldn’t even have to try very hard._

_You could end the war now, here. If they see you fall, your men will yield._

Lightness settled over him. A curious, cotton-stuffed feeling in his head.

_To end the war_.

Why not?

Robb Stark took a shallow cut on the arm, and he redoubled his efforts. Jaime’s right hand throbbed again. He imagined the fingers unfurling and grasping the hilt of his sword.

He could push through and surprise Robb. He could fight him. He could take him down. Perhaps he would die in the effort, but perhaps he would take Robb with him.

That was what he wanted, wasn’t it?

That was what he should want.

It was what Cersei wanted.

His sword was in his left hand. His glove was sticky and tacky with blood that ran down the hilt. He flexed his fingers. He could do it.

End the war. For Cersei.

_She would be an uncontested queen, just as you want. It_ is _what you want, isn’t it?_

No. It wasn’t. That lightness wouldn’t go away. His instincts wanted him to fight. His pride and his family loyalty and his sense of duty. But…

Honor. What of honor?

_Honor compels me_ , she had said, in that tent. What did honor compel _him_ to do?

_End the war._

The smoke billowed past him, stranding him in an island of death. The smell of blood. The sounds of the screaming and the wounded. There was a man at his feet clutching his arm at the elbow. The rest of it had been hewn off, and he was bleeding from the gut, besides. Jaime grimaced and looked away. The smoke cleared enough to see Robb Stark again. But he was not alone.

Brienne had stepped between them.

_You’re supposed to be at Winterfell. You’re supposed to be with Sansa. She would have written to warn me._

But Sansa hated him now, didn’t she? _Why would she warn the man who crippled her brother?_

Smoke stung his eyes, and Brienne was still there.

A vision. A nightmare. A punishment from the gods of some kind. _No_.

Brienne’s sword was raised against him, and she stalked towards him, aiming to push him back, away from Robb. Jaime heard the boy calling Brienne’s name. She swung and killed one of Jaime’s men who jumped to his aid. Jaime’s own sword met hers when she tried to go for another, saving his man. Blocking Brienne’s blow.

_What are you doing?_

Brienne’s eyes met his. _Her maiden’s heart is breaking_. He had thought it once, in Riverrun, when she would have faced him down. Now they were here again.

“Ser Jaime,” she said.

“Lady Brienne,” he replied.

Their swords met, a song, a flash as the twin blades clashed. They came apart and then their blades kissed again. It was a dance more than it was a true fight. Lady Brienne was almost elegant with Oathkeeper in hand. Jaime had been whole the last time they fought, and she had almost beaten him anyway. She had only improved since then. He flung out his gold hand to stop one of his men from joining in. This was his fight. His choice. He would not see any more of his men die for this, but he would have them watch, and see, and _know_. He would have them tell of it, later. Sing of it, even. He almost smiled.

It should have been over already. Her attacks were weak. She wasn’t trying to kill him. It shouldn’t have made him angry, but it did. _Kill me_ , he wanted to say. _Or at least make it a fair fight._ _End it quickly. I’m tired._

Tired. That was it. He was so tired of all of this. The war would end with him, and he _wanted_ it to end. He wanted to rest. He had brought more than enough pain to the world of men. He had killed one unjust king, and his lust for his sister had made the world a new one. He had crippled a boy to save his sister and their children, and his children had died and he and his sister soon would join them.

He had loved, foolishly, all his life, but he had never known what it was like to _be_ loved. Not like how he thought it was meant to be.

_Brienne_. It could have been anybody else. It could have been any man on this battlefield. But of course it was Brienne.

“Yield,” she said, early in the fight.

“No,” he replied, and he struck at her again.

His own strikes were weak enough, and that was the only reason he didn’t pull them. Brienne anticipated his every move. She kicked his feet from under him. She landed him on his knees. His back. He struggled to his feet every time. He would not yield. He _longed_ to yield to her, but he couldn’t. It would be a slow death, yielding. Better this one, on the battlefield, by a worthy woman who deserved to have the songs sung for her. She tripped him again, and she tried to straddle him, tried to press her blade against his neck, but he used his golden hand to push her aside and climb again to his feet. He wavered, but he stayed standing. She was beginning to despair. He could see the way her eyes and her strikes both became wilder. She kept looking back to make sure that Robb was all right. Any other man, she would have cut him down by now to return to her duty. He was always dividing her loyalties, wasn’t he?

“Yield,” she said again.

“You know I can’t yield. It’s over if I do.”

“It’s over anyway, Jaime!” Brienne cried. Jaime struck at her again. She blocked it and turned it away and grabbed him by the collar of his armor. She pulled him in. Her enormous blue eyes were wild with the heat of battle, and for a moment he thought she would kiss him. “Jaime!” she shouted over the sounds of the fight around them. “It’s over! Daenerys has won!”

He pushed himself free of her like an unruly child. A Dothraki attacked him, and he blindly struck out and managed to deflect the blade. More of his men rushed forward to fight Brienne, but Jaime waved them off. _It’s for your own good_ , he wanted to say. _She’ll gut you all without breaking a sweat._

She was sweating against him, though. Much harder to keep from killing a man who was begging for it. Couldn’t she see? Couldn’t she understand?

“She has dragons, Jaime!” Brienne shouted. “And she’s on her way!”

Dragonfire. Burning.

_Burn them all._

And Brienne was _with_ her.

Jaime froze, and Brienne didn’t pull her swing enough. She pulled it, at the last moment, and the tip of her sword only cut through his cheek instead of opening the top of his head. She dropped back, panting, horrified. _Her maiden’s heart is breaking._

Why couldn’t he stop thinking that? Why must she look at him like that? On anyone else, he would say the welling tears were because of the smoke still billowing around them, but he knew. He had known for so long. He just didn’t want to see it. How could she care for him? _Oathbreaker. Man without honor._ She should never have named her sword for him. _Heartbreaker,_ perhaps. _Sister-fucker. Golden fool._

The blood trickled down his cheek, and he wiped it off. He could feel it smear across his skin. Brienne was staring at it. Stricken.

“I will not yield to her,” he said.

“You will yield to _me_ ,” Brienne said in anguished reply. Her sword was shaking in her grasp. No, it was she who shook. She was staring at him. She was afraid of him. Afraid of what he was going to make her do.

“You knew it would come to this,” he said. He wished he sounded more commanding. Older. Less soft. Less spoiled by whatever it was that he felt for her that he could not quite bring himself to name.

“Yield!” she demanded. Jaime shook his head. He attacked her again. Harder this time, his blood singing and stinging on his cheek. His right hand _hurt_. Hurt like it had when they cut it off. When he heard her, tied to the tree, calling his name. Demanding that they not hurt him.

_Too late,_ he had thought, before passing out. _Too late_ _. They’ve killed me._

She met his every clumsy thrust with one of her own. She blocked every attempt. She was a stone wall, and he was _glad_ , and he wished that she would pierce him and get it over with. _I’m so tired. I’m so tired, and I have wasted all that she has given me._

“You forgot our bath together so easily, Brienne?” he asked. The false mirth _sounded_ false. It sounded like empty bravado. It was. “I told you a tale of wildfire, and I believed you listened.”

“Daenerys is not her father.”

“As I am not mine?”

“You _aren’t_.” She struck out at him. Her cheeks were wet with tears, now, and he could not say in truth that his own face was dry. What was he? What kind of monster was he? What was he doing?

Dragons, it turned out, sounded every bit like what you would expect them to sound. One roared overhead, and near the back of the Lannister lines, it opened fire. Jaime nearly dropped his sword.

Everyone nearly dropped their swords. The dragon queen’s armies cheered, and they fought harder, but Jaime’s men…

Jaime could not look away. The wings. The fire. The flames took out the wagons at the back, the ones that weren’t already afire from the Dothraki horsemen. Were there people in those wagons? There had been wounded. Camp followers. Were they in those carts? He saw men burn nearby, rolling on the grass, trying to end it. He couldn’t tell if the wagons were full. He followed the dragon with his eyes, and he saw Robb Stark, across the battlefield, doing the same. Robb’s horror looked akin to his own. _See_? He wanted to ask. _Do you see what you have chosen to lay with?_

“Jaime. Yield.”

Brienne’s swordpoint was not very far from his throat. He could feel it. He turned and looked at her. She was righteous with the fire burning behind her. Sweat and tears painting her face. Her eyes stared out at him. Blue and beautiful. Her face wasn’t quite as ugly as he remembered. Nothing about her was as ugly as he remembered.

_I am the ugliest thing about her._

She was the truest knight he had ever known. A truer knight than he had ever been. He had thought he could be a true knight again, but he fucked it up. He always fucked everything up. _Why?_ For Cersei? Why else. Everything was always for Cersei. Why not the rest of his life? Why not the worst of him? Brienne was the only person he had cared about outside his family in so long, and he was fighting her. For Cersei? Had Cersei earned this kind of blind devotion? Had she earned Brienne’s pain?

He batted Oathkeeper away with his golden hand, but he had forgotten it was Valyrian steel. It cut through the gold fingers like wet paper and lopped them off easier than the knife that took his real hand, and he laughed. He remembered how he had laughed on the bridge that day. Tied up. Still weak. The steel in his hands had been _singing_ to him. The steel in his hands wasn’t singing now. It was humming. Warning, low. Dangerous.

“Jaime, please,” Brienne said. She backed up a few paces. She was still ready to fight him, but she was begging him. “Yield.”

“So your queen can kill me with dragon fire?” he asked. “I killed her father. I’m Cersei’s brother.” She didn’t argue. He raised his sword again. “She won’t give me a good death. Only you can do that.”

She didn’t have a reply for that. She only stared at him. Her mouth was gaping. He attacked her.

She blocked him. She deflected him. They were both tired. Elsewhere on the battlefield, Lannister soldiers were surrendering to the dragon queen. The battle still waged around them, but it wouldn’t for long. Daenerys had landed. He could hear the dragon’s wings as it settled on the ridge above. Brienne kept demanding that he yield.

Yield to be a prisoner again? Yield to be killed by dragonfire? Yield to be sent back as a hostage to Cersei in exchange for something that she likely would not give?

He couldn’t go back. He couldn’t go back to Cersei like this. Shamed like this. His golden hand had been hewn in half, and yes, that seemed right. He was no longer the man he was. He didn’t want to go back.

He didn’t want to win.

He didn’t particularly want the dragon queen to rule, but he didn’t want Cersei to rule either. He just hadn’t known what else to do. It seemed obvious now, but it had taken him too long.

He blocked another thrust by Brienne that aimed to disarm him. He attacked her in turn. She wasn’t fighting back. If she was, she would have killed him easily.

_She won’t even hurt me to defend herself_ , he realized. His cheek stung. He remembered the fear in her eyes.

_I can’t go back._

So many mistakes in his life. The biggest was not dying when they took his hand.

He could have died as the Kingslayer, and there would be no one to miss him. There would be no one to regret his passing. No one to cry for him. He just wished it didn’t have to be _her_ , for her own sake.

For his…well. He had always been selfish. This was what he wanted. Her arms, and the sword they wielded.

_She won’t attack me to save herself_ , he thought. So he blocked her, and he knocked her knees out from under her. He stormed towards Robb Stark. He heard her shouting from behind him. He raised his sword and turned.

Her shout had been a warning. He knew what he was doing. She needed to stop him, but she wouldn’t do it with a sword through his back. She expected him to turn. She expected him to raise his sword and block her blow.

He turned. She thrust her blade with a yell.

Here was where he should block it. Deflect it. Just as he had been doing all his life. Just as he had been doing for this entire battle. He knew it in a detached sort of way. A passing interest. _Here is where I would save myself, if I cared to._ His sword was half-raised already. An instinct.

He let his arm drop.

The sword pierced his armor easily. Valyrian steel. It was a good sword. He hardly even felt it. Brienne dropped the hilt like it had burned her, and maybe it had. His blood spilled out over it. She had thrust it deep. He grunted. Brienne was pulling off her gloves.

“No,” she said simply. He barely heard it, except that it was the only sound he could hear. The pain was starting. His ears rang. His was weak. The blood continued to rush. He was on his knees, quite suddenly. They hurt, too. Brienne was kneeling with him. One of her hands was on his neck. Gripping, her fingers tight on his skin. Her other hand was on his jaw, and she was forcing him to look up at her. She was saying something. “Jaime, please. Jaime, just…”

“I’m sorry,” he managed. His arm wrapped around hers. His hand gripping the armor at her shoulder. He had given her that armor. He had given her the sword that she had used to kill him. Good. _Good_. It was what he deserved. “I’m sorry. I wanted it to be you. I’m sorry.”

He sounded weak and wavering like a child, his voice thin. Brienne was crying. Great, ugly sobs, and he pressed his forehead against hers.

“Don’t,” he said. “It isn’t worth it.”

“Jaime,” she said.

“I should have left with you,” he said. “I should never have stayed. I’m sorry.”

It was all coming out. Why hold any of it back? He was dying. Thank all the gods, he was finally dying. Her eyes were closed, and he pulled her closer. He wanted her closer. Her hand moved to the back of his neck. She understood. She brought his head to her shoulder, and he breathed in the smell of her. Sweat and blood. Brienne. Breathing hurt. He could feel the sword in his side. He wanted her to take it out and let the blood flow, but he didn’t tell her to. This was fine.

He was fading.

He was glad he had given her that sword. He was glad it had been her. He hoped she remembered him as he had been on that day: arming her. Sending her to find Sansa and fulfil her oaths. He hoped the passing years would remove the memories of how he’d only ever disappointed her afterward.

“I wasn’t strong enough,” he said. “I’m sorry.” She said something. He could feel her lips moving in his hair as she held him, but he was slipping, and he couldn’t hear her. He could only hear his own heartbeat. Pounding louder and louder in his ears.

_Love._

It was too much of an emotion. He wished he had never felt it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> songs for this chapter are You are a Memory by Message to Bears, Fortress by Bear's Den, and Church by Lawless, because I'm a Jaime stan and EXTERMELY extra when it comes to his chapters
> 
> also this goes without saying, and I know a lot of you haven't read my previous works before but like...it's me, y'all. I am a massively soft bitch so everything's gonna be cool


	32. Arya III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya tries to get answers from Bran

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> boy howdy what a response to last chapter lmao
> 
> I'm glad people liked it! Hopefully you'll like the direction I'm taking it in from here! 
> 
> This will definitely be another double-chapter day, so expect another one later on.

“That isn’t how that works,” Bran said. He said that a lot, about a lot of things. Each time, it got even more annoying.

“What do you mean that isn’t how that works? You say things all the time about how stuff is inevitable or _not_ inevitable. Surely that means you can tell if something’s a good idea or not.”

“No, I can’t. It doesn’t work like that.”

Bran didn’t ever show his frustration the way he used to, but Arya could sense it on him. Somewhere deep inside. He found her irritating. Good. She _wanted_ him to be annoyed. She was annoyed too.

“It feels like it’s something I’m supposed to do,” she said. “Like it’s the most important thing I’m meant for.”

“That isn’t…”

“How it works? Yeah. Got it. Seven hells, what’s the point of being some kind of mystical truth telling wizard if you’re going to be a mystical truth telling shit about it? The old Bran would have had a lot more fun with this.”

“I am not Bran,” Bran said. It always felt like a lie when he said it, even though Arya didn’t think it was. She’d spent enough time trying to feel him out that she thought the truth was probably a bit more complicated. Like if he wanted to be truly honest, really honest, he would say _I am not_ only _Bran_.

“Yes you are,” Arya said. Bran frowned at her. “You just need to remember. I never stopped being Arya Stark, either.”

“That was different,” Bran said. But he seemed softer somehow. Which was exactly how Bran _would_ react, even if he didn’t think he was Bran again. He would have liked that she was _trying_ to find him. She couldn’t help but smile at him.

“No it isn’t,” she said. “You just have to come back to yourself. Remember a bit. Like I did.”

Old Bran would have rolled his eyes at that. New Bran probably thought that rolling his eyes was below him, or whatever, but Arya could tell he wanted to.

“You need to wait,” he said. His expression was very sour about it, but he was _actually saying something._ “Until the time is right.”

Arya seized on that with a savage smile.

“When’s it going to be right?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, but when she glared at him he conceded, “but it can’t be now. Now is too fragile. We need you here for when the Night King comes. Cersei can wait.”

“Cersei can wait as long as she likes. _I’m_ the one who can’t.” Arya paced in front of his wheelchair as he looked at her passively. “Fine. _Why_ do I have to wait? Bran would want to help us, you know. Not just everyone, but his family, especially. He’d want to use his powers to make us understand. Prepare us better for what’s to come.”

Bran sighed that time. A genuine show of annoyance that made Arya laugh. He could say that he wasn’t Bran all he wanted, but she could find Bran beneath the rest.

“You need to wait to kill Cersei Lannister because of her twin,” he said, almost petulant, like she was dragging it out of him. “The Lion of Casterly Rock has died on the Rose Road. Ser Jaime is all that’s left, and we need him in the days to come. In small ways and in bigger ways. If you kill his sister now, we may lose him for good.”

“A real answer,” Arya said. “Was that so hard? A real answer to a real question, and I’ll stay here and kill the queen another time.” Bran sighed again, and she laughed again, too.

She left, flipping the Valyrian steel dagger he had given her a little while back. She wasn’t sure _why_ her brothers were so obsessed with giving her weapons, but she had to wonder if Robb would bring her anything back when he finally made it home. That would be nice. A bow or something. Though _because I want him to bring me a present_ would probably not be enough of a justification to convince Sansa to tell Robb that Arya and Bran were back. Sansa was still afraid for Robb and Brienne, even after all their positive letters about the dragon queen. Arya understood; Sansa had been made to write lies in a letter once too.

And it wasn’t even like Arya _needed_ any other weapons, anyway. Needle was still her favorite, but the dagger was Valyrian steel, and that made it special. She liked to throw it at different targets while the wildlings watched her. Arya quite liked them; they thought she was amazing, and they never said things like _you’re quite good for a girl_ or whatever. Tormund had taken to calling her _Little Spitfire_ , which she liked, because he was never rude or mocking about it. He thought she was fascinating, and he always asked her to teach all the smaller wildling girls how to fight. She liked that. Girls _should_ know how to fight. It was good that he agreed.

_Little Fire_ was what she had called the dagger. Tormund had been pleased about that, and Arya was sure they were friends now. She and Jon and Tormund liked to go hunting together with Ghost, and they liked to eat together at dinners, along with Sansa, and it felt like Tormund had slotted easily into the family. He reminded Arya sometimes of if Uncle Benjen had King Robert’s tendency to laugh at everything.

According to Sansa, Tormund had a crush on Brienne. That made sense. He _would_ have a crush on Brienne. Arya had snorted and said, “seven hells, he’d better hope Lannister stays on the wrong side of the war,” which made Sansa laugh clearer than she had since Arya had been back.

So maybe she still had to wait to kill the queen. Overall, Arya was still feeling quite content with the way things were turning out. She was home, and she was with her family, and even Bran was a bit more like Bran than he had been.

The Hound was crouched in front of the campfire where she’d left him. The Lightning Lord was with him. They’d shown up one day and had both groaned to see her, though Arya knew that The Hound was smiling beneath all that bluster. They’d said something about Thoros telling them they had to come and be ready to join the fight, but Arya hadn’t cared much about that. She’d only cared that she and The Hound had a grudge in common.

“What’d he say?” The Hound asked. Arya twirled her dagger, liking the way it caught and reflected the flames.

“He said it’s not the right time,” she said.

“Not the right time,” The Hound snorted. “Well when is? I’m losing patience, girl.”

“Your brother and the queen _will_ die,” Arya promised. “But we have to wait.”

“First _he_ tells me we have to come here because of the _visions_. Then _you_ tell me we have to kill my brother and the queen. And now your _brother_ is telling me that I’m sitting up here freezing my ass off in the north for fucking nothing.” Sandor growled and tried to look intimidating while eating his stew. It didn’t work.

“You got to see me and Sansa one more time before you die,” Arya pointed out with a grin. The Hound glared at her and grumbled some more, but he didn’t argue.

Arya moved along. She went back to flipping her dagger. She wondered at Bran’s words about Jaime Lannister and the Rose Road. Who had killed him? And had he died like Jon had? Or was it a metaphor? She probably should have asked. She was so sick of dealing with confusing Bran.

She went looking for her less confusing brother and found him in the stables, helping Tormund and two wildling women lift a heavy beam up so that they could secure it to the ceiling. Jon always seemed lighter when he was doing work like this. Not only because it was the only time he wasn’t wrapped up in that big cloak, but because he was actually smiling and laughing. He was always _soft_ , really. Gentle and kind. But there was something about him that was especially good when he was with the Free Folk.

_Cousin_ , she thought. She was trying to get used to the idea, at least for Sansa’s sake. _He’s our cousin._ She couldn’t do it. Jon was her brother. It was just different for Sansa, but Sansa didn’t want to hear it. Sansa wanted to beat herself up for it and avoid Jon and make Jon look all anxious and confused every time he asked Arya where Sansa was and tried to pretend not to be worried and hurt about the fact that the answer was always “somewhere else”.

If it wasn’t her own siblings, she wouldn’t have cared. She’d seen lots of odd things on her travels. If Sansa was just some girl she met, what would she have said? She wouldn’t have given half a shit. She would have told the girl do to whatever made her happy, right? That would have been the right thing to tell her. As long as nobody was getting hurt. It was just different because it _was_ her siblings. That was okay, too. Things were weird and different and gross sometimes. That didn’t mean they were bad. Not as long as no one was getting hurt.

People were getting hurt _now_. Jon and Sansa both acting odd and squirrely around each other. Arya knew it wasn’t her fault, but she blamed herself anyway. Both of them would have been content to carry their secrets to the grave, except Arya had to go and open her mouth and accuse Sansa of lying.

In fairness, she had been convinced that the secret was an easy one: Sansa hating Jon, or at least being jealous of him. That was Sansa. _This_ wasn’t.

Not that she at all understood what _this_ was, anyway. Sansa wouldn’t talk about it. She just got really pale and left the conversation, or got mad and left the conversation, or pretended she hadn’t heard and found some dumb excuse to leave the conversation anyway. Not hard to guess the basics considering how she kept babbling on about Cersei all the time, but Arya wanted...well, she didn’t _want_ details. She thought details would help. There was definitely a difference. 

But Sansa didn’t want to _solve_ the problem. She didn’t want to understand it. She wanted to sing some lovely little song and pretend that everything was fine while she closed herself away. And that was fine if that was what she wanted to do, but she couldn’t keep hurting Jon in the process. Acting all cold and indifferent and making Jon look confused and sad. When she was a little girl still, Arya would have wanted all of Jon’s attention for herself, and she would have been glad if Sansa’s coldness hurt him, because it meant that there was more of him for her. She didn’t feel like that anymore. Not about people. There were things about Sansa that Jon liked and needed, and Arya couldn’t give them to him. Just as there were things about both Sansa and Jon that Arya needed. Separate things that were only from them. Bran, too, even if he was weird.

“I don’t see why it matters,” Sansa had said once, when Arya was asking her why she was avoiding Jon. “He has you and Bran back. He doesn’t need me.”

Arya knew her coldness for an act, though. And she was glad she knew it, because it was _convincing_. If she hadn’t known it, she wouldn’t have even _suspected_ it, and she might have thought Sansa heartless for it.

Sansa wasn’t heartless. Sansa was terrified. And Arya just wanted to fix it, but everything she did seemed to just make it worse.

Killing Cersei would make it better. She was sure of it.

She waved to Jon to get his attention, and he smiled at her and walked over, looking light and like himself again. He had been seeming more like himself ever since they started getting letters from Robb, talking about how the dragon queen seemed like she might be receptive to helping with the Night King, and how they were already sending shipments of Dragonglass from the mines. The Night King thing…Arya still didn’t understand it. But she knew that it was something that Jon was really worried about, and she trusted Jon beyond anything. She believed him.

“I’m staying,” Arya told him. She knew he would smile, and he did. He had been so against the idea of her going to Kings Landing. Sansa had hesitated and clearly didn’t want to try and tell Arya what to do, but Jon had made no secret about his disapproval.

“Good,” Jon said. “There are a thousand things that could kill Cersei. You don’t need to be the one.”

“I don’t know,” Arya laughed. “No one else has managed it so far. Maybe they need someone to show them how it’s done.”

She already had ideas. Wearing Littlefinger’s face would probably be easiest, because Cersei knew him enough that she’d be curious about what he would have to say. She would let him close enough. Arya _had_ liked the idea of wearing the face of her twin, because Cersei probably trusted him more than anybody if she let him fuck her, but that would make Sansa angry, and Arya didn’t want to do that. She wanted Sansa to be able to sleep at night without nightmares of Cersei coming for her, or sending someone for her, or whatever it was that Sansa dreamed about that made her so scared whenever she said Cersei’s name.

“I know you think it would help Sansa,” Jon said.

“It would,” Arya interrupted. Jon shook his head. This was the only thing about Jon that she didn’t love. He always thought he knew better than her. She hadn’t figured out a way to tell him gently yet, remind him that she wasn’t a little girl just because she was still his little sister. “She’s afraid Cersei’s going to hurt her. Or hurt one of us. It’s a problem I can solve.”

“Arya…” Jon sighed. He looked tired all the time. She wondered if she should tell him that. Sansa wasn’t the only one with demons. Jon’s were just harder to figure out. They were bigger, maybe. Not as easy to kill.

“Not everything can be solved by killing?” she asked, mocking. He laughed.

“Yeah,” he said. “You got it.”

“Not everything can,” Arya said. “But _this_ can. Don’t you want Sansa to be happy?”

Jon sighed again, withering. Arya watched him carefully. She tried not to feel guilty about it. Jon didn’t understand her anymore. He didn’t understand the games she played or the things she could do. She knew that. She used that.

“Of course I do,” he said, and Arya nodded.

Good. He wasn’t lying. At least she could be sure that _he_ wasn’t having a weird crisis.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Whispers by Vancouver Sleep Clinic


	33. Daenerys IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daenerys reflects in the aftermath of the battle at Highgarden

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whew, okay, I was a little worried I wouldn't get this done in time, but here we are! Thank you to everyone reading and commenting. I am very, very slowly making my way through my comments, and even more slowly finishing my 2nd edits of the last 20 chapters of this story (the horrifying hellscape of my first draft of the end of this story is truly a wonder). Hopefully I'll be able to start doing two-a-day posts more often, but I don't want to promise anything until those last 20 chapters are cleared!

Highgarden was beautiful. It seemed especially beautiful after the chaos that they had all endured on the battlefield.

Dany had been on battlefields before. She had smelled the stink of death and she had heard the screams of burned and dying men. She had heard the wailing of women and the high-pitched cries of children. This should have been easier; it was not a village being raided, nor a city being sacked. It was one army facing off against another. It was men fighting men. There had been no children. The only women in the field of battle had been Lady Brienne and herself, and the nurses who came in afterward to care for the wounded.

Still. It lingered on her long after the battle was done. The screams and the flames. The blood and the death. It tainted even this beautiful place with its green gardens and its many-colored flowers and its pretty girls in elaborate dresses who followed Olenna Tyrell everywhere.

It had not, in the end, been a massacre. The Lannister soldiers surrendered after their commander and several lieutenants had fallen in battle.

But it had _nearly_ been a massacre, and Dany for some reason could not put it out of her mind.

The Lannister army, after they had surrendered, they had been so _afraid_ of her. There was power in that fear. _Yes_ , she had thought. _Fear me, and put an end to this. Kneel to me and worship me and forget your mad queen_.

She had burned the carts as Tyrion had advised. She had not burned the armies. But there were men in those wagons. And women, too. Tyrion didn’t tell her that, but she’d heard the hostage army talking about it. Camp followers. Women who traveled with them and cooked their meals and shared their tents. Bedslaves, it sounded like, but Varys told her that some women just _chose_ to follow armies. There was coin and food and company. And she had burned some of them for it.

She had nearly given the order to Drogon to burn more of them. She had been so _angry_ when she saw that they were still fighting. Some of them had stopped when they saw her dragon, but not enough. The arrogance of men, to think that they could withstand her if she chose to unleash the full might of her children. 

She still wasn’t sure what it was that had stopped her. Perhaps it had only been Tyrion, the agony she could imagine as he stood on the ridge, watching his family’s army fight and die. He was looking for his brother, she knew. Or perhaps it was knowing that her own people were out there, fighting, and that she might burn some of them along with the Lannisters. Or perhaps it was simply that the idea of burning _anyone_ should have turned her stomach, and suddenly it frightened her that it did not. She heard the screams of the burning men and women in those carts, and she remembered how horrified she had been when her khalsar attacked the Lhazareen. There had been smoke and death _then_ , too. She had pitied them. Where had that pity gone? The pity for people less powerful than her own.

 _What am I doing?_ The realization had been sudden and complete. _Who do they see?_

Even though she had stopped herself, the battle was over quickly, and that made the sick feeling inside her even deeper. _You see? You did not need to burn them. Just the threat was enough. Just as Tyrion suggested_. Most of the rest of the soldiers submitted peacefully, kneeling to her after the battle was done.

After their commander had fallen.

Daenerys watched Lady Brienne now from the window. The warrior woman was in the garden below, speaking with Olenna Tyrell. Olenna laughed at something Brienne said, and Brienne blushed and stammered and looked nothing at all like the woman who had driven her sword into the side of the Kingslayer and then held him and cried as he bled on the battlefield.

“I made the right choice,” Dany said aloud.

“Yes, I think you did,” Varys replied. Dany turned and faced him, sighing. She tried to banish thoughts of the battle, but she had been unsuccessful every day since.

“There is such a thing as too merciful,” she said.

“Yes. There is. But there is also such a thing as _just_. Finding the balance is a difficult task, but it’s an important one.”

Dany had been surprised by the scene. The Maid of Tarth and The Kingslayer. Like something out of a song that Dany would have loved as a little girl. Brienne had delivered what should have been a killing blow, and then held the man as he died. They were holding _each other_ : Dany had thought at first that the Kingslayer was still fighting, but as Dany followed Tyrion down the ridge, she saw he wasn’t fighting at all. He was pulling himself closer. Pressing his forehead against hers. Trying to hold on to her, too.

“Everyone saw it,” Varys continued. “That the Kingslayer allowed himself to be defeated. They won’t forget that.”

“No,” Dany admitted. _She_ certainly wouldn’t.

She had cried when Drogo was taken from her. She had cried when she lost her baby. When Irri had been killed.

She had cried plenty. She had lost plenty. She had _felt_ loss. She had felt despair. But the sobs of a warrior maiden on the battlefield were difficult to forget, and she knew that the sound of them would linger in the ears of the army for a long while.

“If you had killed him, they never would have forgotten it. And you would have had to kill her, too.”

Varys didn’t say it, but his tone was too pointed to mean anything else: _and you would have had to kill Robb Stark to get to them._

She turned away from him, back to the window. Brienne and Olenna were sitting in the shade, close to the window, but it was the northern king on the other side of the garden that drew Dany’s eyes now. He was training with a few of the other men. He laughed loudly at the antics of Brienne’s squire Podrick as the boy trounced a young Dothraki who wanted to learn to fight with a sword. Dany smiled along with him. Robb Stark had that kind of laugh.

“Not to mention Tyrion,” Varys continued, sensing that she was distracted.

“Yes. How _is_ Tyrion? Have you seen him?”

“He seldom leaves his brother’s rooms. Now that Jaime is out of danger, I expect he’ll return to us in short time.”

“I told him he could have all the time he needed.”

“Yes, and I’m sure he appreciates that, but you know him.”

Dany hummed agreement. She looked through the trees around the garden. The smoke had finally all dispersed several days ago. She’d never been _scolded_ before, but Olenna had made her feel like a child when Viserion lit a fire in a glade and wound up burning several acres of wood. She was glad to see it finally put to rights. Olenna Tyrell was a good ally to have, and she was a good hostess as they recovered and regrouped and prepared to head back to Dragonstone, but she was _not_ the sort of person unafraid to show her displeasure.

Robb was showing the young Dothraki how to adjust his stance while using Podrick as a dummy. Podrick said something that made Robb laugh again, throwing his head back. Dany hid her smile this time, but she knew Varys noticed.

“He’s an odd sort of king,” she said to him, without turning around.

“Well, you’re an odd sort of queen.” Varys came to stand beside her, and he watched the same scene she did. “It’s a good match.”

Dany looked at him, and she saw that he was serious. She scoffed.

“You don’t agree?” Varys asked.

“I hate it when you try to sound innocent. You should know it doesn’t work.”

“You’re not the first person to say so. You knew that it might have to happen. You knew it when you left Meereen. When you left Daario Naharis.”

Dany felt a pang to be reminded. She hadn’t _loved_ Daario, truly, though she knew she could have loved him, if she were a different kind of woman.

“Daario,” she started. She stopped herself. She had a habit of saying too much to Tyrion, and she knew she shouldn’t make those same mistakes with Varys. She trusted her advisor, but not as wholly as she did her Hand. She wished again for Jorah, wherever he was. She could have told Jorah anything. “Daario encouraged the worst of my impulses.”

Impossible not to think of Robb, then, and the way he stood between his own bodyguard and her dragon. She hadn’t intended her dragon’s presence to look like a threat, but he knew that, of course. He hadn’t done it to be brave. He hadn’t done it because he thought she would truly give the order to have the Kingslayer and Brienne burned. He had done it because it was his instinct to step between the people he cared for and the things that would hurt them.

“And Robb Stark encouraged mercy on the battlefield,” Varys reminded her.

Yes, he had. There had been men who refused to kneel. Men who chose to die. Men higher up in the Lannister army, mostly. Pride connected them to their choice to serve Cersei Lannister. Men lower in the army had been grateful for the chance to live, but the noblemen... Robb had managed to get through to some of them, but not all. They had chosen death, and so death had been granted, but it had been a gentler death than she had given others who had stood against her. Robb had carried out the sentences himself.

“Most of the Lannister army bent the knee, but there were those that didn’t. I could have burned them. Showed an example. I didn’t. I showed them mercy, instead. Hostages or swift executions. A very _public_ show of mercy. I allowed Tyrion to bring his brother back here. I allowed him to use any means to save him. My father’s killer, and he has been treated like a prince.” She laughed, disbelieving. Robb was demonstrating now to a crowd of five young boys, who had all come to watch. Brienne was beginning to eye them jealously, and Olenna was waving her off. _Go, child_ , Dany could almost hear her saying. _Show them how it’s done. I want to watch you trounce those boys_. “Tell me, Varys,” Dany said. “Would my father have been merciful?”

“No.” The answer was quick. Dany was unsurprised. “Not at the end, no.”

Robb greeted Brienne happily, clapping her on the back. His smile was so bright.

“I don’t think he was expecting it to work,” she mused.

“Your grace?” Varys asked. Dany turned away from the window. She set her back against it. She remembered Robb panting, his arm bleeding. His face had been stained with soot and blood, and he looked up at her. He had been afraid of her, too. And yet he stood there anyway.

“Robb Stark reminded me,” she said. “That the Kingslayer would make a better political prisoner than a corpse. He did the same for the others. Prisoners. Hostages. They’ll change their minds, he said. They’ll fight for you. Become your army. When I pushed back on the idea, he begged me. He has been nothing but calm and courteous, but he _begged_ me for their lives, or at least for kinder deaths. Men he had just been fighting. Men who are his family’s enemies.”

“He gave you sound advice. Every man you win over is another man against Cersei.”

“And yet again we’re back to it: there’s such a thing as too much mercy.”

Even as she argued, Dany wished that it wasn’t true. But it _was_. Merciful people were taken advantage of. They were used. They were cut down. The merciless were the ones who survived.

 _Robb survived_ , she reminded herself. _He could have died, but he didn’t._

She had a memory, only half-formed. Someone was reading her a story from a book. She couldn’t remember who it was. A woman. Not a mother, or a sister, or even a friend. A handmaid, perhaps. Some friend of Illryio. She could hardly remember the woman’s face. She only remembered that the story was sad, and at the end, Dany had cried. The woman had wiped her tears with a silk handkerchief.

“Why did he have to die?” Dany had asked.

“Because he had done so many bad things. He had to die doing something brave, to make amends,” the woman had replied. “He had to die to become a good man.”

“No. That’s stupid,” Dany had cried, and the woman had laughed at her. Kind and gentle.

 _Not every good man dies._ Was it she who said those words? Or had it been the woman? She couldn’t remember. She just remembered them being spoken. _Not every good man dies._

Robb was merciful. Robb was kind. Robb was still alive.

But Robb had been betrayed. He had trusted too much. _Mercy_.

“I couldn’t have killed The Kingslayer without it becoming a problem,” she said. She felt disconnected from the conversation. Disjointed. She knew Varys was worried about her. She had been unsettled since the battle, withdrawn and quiet. Not even Missandei’s presence could soothe her of late. She would close her eyes and think of their fear. _His_ fear. Robb. Standing between she and her father’s killer and begging her to reconsider.

How many people had begged her father for mercy? How many people had stared at her father with terror in their eyes?

“No, you couldn’t have,” Varys agreed. “But he still might die, if he needs to.”

Dany understood what he was saying. She pretended not to notice it. _I am not my father._

“Will Cersei try to get him back? When she finds out that he’s a hostage…”

“Jaime Lannister loves his sister beyond all reason,” Varys said thoughtfully. “If the positions were reversed, I would tell you to be wary. He would do anything. Kill anyone he had to. He would not stop until he was sure his sister was safe. But Cersei has never loved anyone as much as she loves power. She won’t give it up for him.”

Dany felt another pang of sympathy for Daario. There were times where she wondered if he hadn’t felt so much more for her than she had for him.

“And his brother?” she asked.

“Tyrion has always worshipped Jaime. If anything happened to him…I don’t know if you would lose him, but you would have to make it blameless.”

Dany shook her head. She could not fail to acknowledge _that_ attempt.

“No,” she said. “The Kingslayer won’t die on my order. I have already given him mercy. I won’t take it back. To be an inconstant queen might be worse than a merciful one.”

“As you say, your grace.”

“When he wakes. Will he be a danger?”

“Perhaps. He gave the Starks some trouble. They resorted to chaining him by the throat in a cage like an animal. I wouldn’t suggest that method this time.”

“Tyrion might object,” Dany said. She remembered the way Jaime Lannister had held to Brienne on the battlefield. She remembered the way Brienne held him. Brienne would probably object, too. “He lost his hand defending Lady Brienne?”

“Yes, your grace.”

“He cares for her. That was obvious.”

“I think so, yes.”

“I want to speak with her,” Dany decided. There were so many questions to which she wanted answers regarding the Kingslayer. She wanted to know how to ensure that he would bend the knee and join the Lannister army to hers. She wanted to know if he would be dangerous. She wanted to know if he was still a slave to his sister, or if his attempted death signaled a larger change of heart. She wanted to know if she could count on him the same way she counted on Tyrion. Lady Brienne seemed like the person who could best answer those questions. It was impossible to extract a straight answer from Tyrion, but Lady Brienne was said to be honorable to a fault, and Daenerys expected she would get closer to the truth with the Maid of Tarth than with her Hand.

“It won’t be easy speaking to her without going through Robb Stark. She’s always guarding him. And he may not be receptive, after...”

The way Robb had looked at her…

She showed mercy. Robb Stark had nothing to complain about. She tried to hold on to that feeling, and let go of the screams from the wagons. She couldn’t.

“She isn’t always with him,” Dany said. She didn’t look back out the window. She hated that she still wanted to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song for this chapter is All is Not Lost by Tony Anderson
> 
> The next chapter is a Brienne chapter, so we'll be getting into her headspace soon, don't worry. 
> 
> (although DO worry if you want her to be MOSTLY angry with Jaime, because that, uh, isn't gonna be it lmao)


	34. Brienne V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daenerys speaks with Brienne at Jaime's bedside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so, I think I need to add a bit of a disclaimer to this fic, because for a while now I've been feeling unsettled about my own response to the responses to this fic, and I think I finally worked out what I need to say: 
> 
> guys, this is a romance story. It is, at its heart and at its core and almost everything else about it, a shippy fluffy fic about the three couples and two friendships tagged. Yes, there is plot around it. Yes, I'm tackling a lot of material at once. And yes, of course there are things that I hope I am handling better than the showrunners ever did! But that is not, and has never been, the focus. 
> 
> Jaime/Brienne is tagged first because they're the main focus of this story. Jon/Sansa and Robb/Dany are also major parts! But it's a Jaime/Brienne story at its absolute core. And Jaime is and has always been my favorite asoiaf character. Sansa is my favorite GOT character. They both feature heavily here and come off well for that reason. I love Robb. I love Cersei. I love Catelyn Tully Stark. But Jaime is my #1, and that's reflected in the writing. I'm not trying to do a real deep "what if Robb survived" fic. I'm not trying to plug every plothole D&D left in their story. I'm just writing the story I want to write. I'm just trying to have fun with characters I enjoy. 
> 
> I am sorry if you clicked on this story and started reading it expecting something different. But what I just described is what you're going to find here. I don't know if it was the length that made people expect something much more discourse and research heavy, but this story is about love and friendship and emotions, and that's what it's going to continue to be. I mean this as sincerely as I can: I am sorry if I'm disappointing anyone, but I'm trying not to misrepresent my intentions here. Guys, this is a ding-dong fic, the first draft of which was written in a month by someone who just wants a bunch of dummies to kiss and be happy. I'm not trying to dunk on my own writing. There are elements of this story that I'm really excited about and proud of. But it's hard to be excited and proud to post new chapters when you're constantly worried that people are expecting things from this fic that they aren't going to get. I'm glad to write something that makes me happier than the show's final few seasons. But it's ultimately my story, written by me: a person who wants these specific things. If they aren't also the things you want, I get it, and I'm grateful no one had to pay to read this because, luckily for all of us, this content is free! I have only wasted your time! 
> 
> I also have this terrible, unfair habit of responding to critical comments right away, because I'm afraid to let them go unanswered, or afraid that people will think i'm just ignoring their critical comments. I always rush to apologize for disappointing people. That's just my personality. I'm an anxious mess who hates being the cause of anyone's bad feelings. But it's not fair to the positive comments that I get every chapter and have let build up because so many of you have been leaving such detailed, amazing, beautiful feedback, and you deserve to be thanked and acknowledged properly. 
> 
> I know all of this is probably unnecessary to say, and i should just suck it up and deal with the comments as they come, but I truly, sincerely mean it when I say that I don't want to waste anyone's time, here. I want you to know exactly what you're getting into. I want to like posting this story. i don't want to dread updating it. I want to tell myself that disappointed expectations are not my fault. I want to focus on writing and editing faster so I can get this story done with. And I want to answer every amazing comment that you all have left. I will try to be better about it, and I will try to chill. And I'm sorry. As always lmao. Please don't read this story if it makes you unhappy or angry or whatever else. There are so many great stories out there. You really don't have to read this one.

She did not expect the queen to be in Jaime’s room.

She hadn’t expected _anyone_ to be in Jaime’s room. She always visited when she knew that no one else was there. Grey Worm had taken to informing her when Tyrion left to get food or attend a strategy meeting too important to miss. In the hall, Robb had seen the quiet gesture from the Unsullied commander, and he had, humiliatingly, dismissed Brienne without a second thought. He didn’t _say_ that she was free to visit Jaime, but he didn’t have to. Everyone knew, Brienne suspected.

She wondered if Daenerys had sent Grey Worm to get her. She supposed it didn’t matter; she would not be surprised by the man’s loyalty to his queen.

Brienne did _like_ Daenerys, and she was grateful to her. Daenerys could have ordered Jaime and the rest of the Lannister army killed. She could have withheld treatment and let him die there on the battlefield, the way he had wanted. Brienne tried to hold on to that grateful feeling so that it was the strongest feeling she felt, but really she was afraid. Saving Jaime had been important to her, and she had somehow done it. But now he was in danger always. Tyrion was by his bed nearly every waking hour, afraid of assassins and the changing whims of the dragon queen. Two Lannister men who knelt early and swore to Daenerys were allowed to guard their commander’s door, though Brienne knew they would not be enough if the queen truly wanted Jaime dead. And when he woke…

He had woken several times already, but never for long, and never in any solid way. If ever he woke when Brienne was beside his bed, he’d apologize and reach for her with his hand or his stump, and she would take whichever was offered. His speech was always slurred and his words confused and often repeated from one visit to the next. Milk of the poppy made him sleepy and pliant, but he never lost a kind of caged look. A hollowness. She would always promise him that she was going to protect him, but she wasn’t sure anything landed with him. He still looked so lost. That terrifying emptiness that she had spied on the battlefield. It was exactly as he’d looked in those weeks after they took his hand and he chose to slowly starve instead of living without it. He would stare at her as he fell back asleep, his eyelids drooping. His eyes would swim with tears. He was weak and helpless and not like himself at all, and she woke sometimes from nightmares about it. Just him, looking at her like that.

Brienne knew what Jaime looked like when he wanted to die, and so she was terrified. The last time she saw it, she goaded him into surviving for revenge, but for what could Jaime possibly want to survive this time? Brienne didn’t know. It wasn’t as easy as it was before. The hand had been an obvious cause, but she found now that she didn’t know enough about what was in Jaime’s mind. What had he lost? What did he want? What would help him? She imagined Tyrion didn’t know any more than _she_ did, and that was why Tyrion looked so like his brother lately. Perhaps it would have been helpful to speak to him about it, but Brienne was afraid to do that. Afraid of what Tyrion would say. Afraid of what he had seen when she held his brother on the battlefield and sobbed. She had spoken to him several times, but always finished the conversation quickly, not wanting to risk his japes or accidental cruelties.

Sometimes she thought it would help. Just to talk to someone who cared for Jaime at all. Robb was sympathetic, and Podrick, too. They cared about what happened to Jaime because _she_ cared about what happened to him, but they didn’t know him the way she did. They wouldn’t mourn him if he died except to feel sorry for her, that she had killed the man she so clearly loved. Tyrion would understand.

She just hadn’t worked up the courage yet. Jaime was the easier of the two to face: he was hardly himself, anyway.

When Brienne entered Jaime’s room, expecting to pass a quick visit in checking on him, seeing with her own eyes that he was still recovering, Daenerys was standing by the window by Jaime’s bed.

She turned over her shoulder and smiled. It was a friendly enough smile, and the sunlight filtering in through the window had the effect of making her look sweet and harmless, but still Brienne was alarmed. She would not soon forget the sight of the dragon on that ridge while she held Jaime on the battlefield. He had been fading quickly, perhaps unaware of the danger. He had been holding on to her arm with as much strength as he could muster. She had found herself in the horrible position of hoping he would die before the queen could make him suffer.

Brienne would not forget that.

“Your grace,” she said. She bowed. She wasn’t sure if any of that was right. She didn’t think she would ever get a handle on addressing the young queen. 

“Lady Brienne,” Daenerys said. She smiled wider. Softer. Brienne knew too much of pleasant smiles and the barbs they could hide. She liked the dragon queen well enough, but she could not trust her in this. “Please, come in. I was hoping to speak to you.”

It wasn’t difficult to guess what she wanted to speak about.

It had been long enough since the battle that Brienne could feel an intense sense of embarrassment for the way she had behaved. It had been a battle. She was a warrior. Ser Jaime had been determined to die. He would not yield.

It should not have surprised her.

She had had time enough to relive the battle a hundred times. Nights enough to wake up gasping, remembering the feeling of her sword sinking into Jaime’s side. _Lucky_ , the healer had said. _He’s lucky he took the wound here. The damage is not so bad. But the blood…_

Jaime _meant_ to die. He would not think it lucky to have survived. He probably thought it lucky to have found her on the battlefield. To be killed by the one person who would mourn him, remember him, who would not try to make him suffer. He would not have been able to beat her, but he would have been able to block her until they both ran out of energy, but instead he tricked her. Forced her hand.

If she’d had any doubts, they had vanished the moment he apologized, with her sword still sheathed in him.

It had been a foolish trap, and she had fallen into it. She should have realized that Jaime’s charge towards Robb was a feint. He was too good a fighter to pull off in the middle of the battle. He had known that she would never hurt him for her own sake, and that danger to her king would make her sloppy. 

That he had breathed out those apologies after had only made it worse. That he had pressed his forehead to hers only made it _haunting_. She had mourned him and hated him and held him and cried for him like a much more delicate maiden on the battlefield, and now that days had passed she knew how ridiculous she must have looked. She hadn’t been thinking about it at the time. She hadn’t been thinking about anything. Only Jaime. Now enough time had passed, and it was sadness she felt. Sadness for him, and for Tyrion, and for herself. Sadness for the fact that he didn’t believe himself worthy of surviving. Fear, perhaps, that he would hate her when he woke and found that he had not been granted the death he wanted. But sadness most of all.

She had loved Jaime too long to be able to understand how he could not see the goodness within him, but she _knew_ it, at least. She knew that he likely thought Westeros would be better without him in it. She knew that he thought she would mourn him and then forget him. She knew him. She didn’t know how to help him, though.

The bed he had been given was big and plush. An honored guest’s room, which Olenna Tyrell had plainly been displeased by, though she didn’t argue. He had been tended to by people hand-picked by Tyrion, who watched them all closely. Brienne had avoided his rooms for three days until Tyrion sought her out and apologized for not finding her sooner.

“I saw you,” he said. Kind, at least that first time, though he had been as sarcastic as ever each time she had seen him since. “Everyone saw you. You tried harder to keep him alive than anyone else ever has. Thank you, Brienne.”

After that, it was easier. She still avoided Jaime’s room when Tyrion was in it, but she was drawn to it when it was safe, empty. She checked with the healers as he slept. She made quick visits to reassure herself. She needed it some mornings more than others. Her dreams were still often of him, and they were sharper now that he was so close. Now that she had nearly killed him.

“I don’t know what I can help you with,” she said slowly to Daenerys. She was unused to speaking to queens. She was unused to speaking to beautiful women generally, but _queens_ were a whole other creature. Margaery Tyrell had been pretty and sharp and difficult to read. She had been kind enough, but Brienne always felt like she was so far behind. And Brienne had done passing well with Cersei, though she hardly understood _how_ , now that time had passed and she had become more aware of her feelings for Jaime that would have made that already-awkward conversation even worse. “But I would be happy to try.”

“Sit, please,” Daenerys said, and she gestured to the chair beside the bed where Brienne sat whenever Jaime was awake enough to reach for her. She didn’t usually sit when he was asleep. It wasn’t a purposeful avoidance, but there _was_ something uncomfortable about being so close to him while he wasn’t awake to see her. She glanced at him before returning her eyes to the queen. He looked peaceful in his sleep. Unbelievably. After everything. His face was more heavily bearded than it had been when she saw him at Riverrun last, and his hair had grown longer. More like he looked when they first met. It had grown darker, though, and shot through with gray. It made his skin look pale, and it made him seem shrunken, smaller, with the white sheets pulled up to his bare shoulders. She hated to be so close to him. She still couldn’t understand what she felt. Terror and rage and sadness and a love that frightened her with its strength. The chair was too close to where he lay. It made every feeling stronger. 

She sat anyway, because the queen asked her to, and because Brienne had a feeling that she once again held Jaime’s life in her hands.

Daenerys sat too, in a chair closer to the wall. Brienne felt like Jaime’s guardian, rather than like the one who had put him in this bed.

_Your refusal to kill him saved his life_ , she reminded herself.

_He will not thank you for it_ , she remembered.

_Only you can give me that,_ he had said _._ A quick death. A good death. She had saved his life instead, and now he lingered, healing slowly, drugged and helpless, in the temporary quarters of the daughter of the king he had killed. She could not let him burn. She would kill him to spare him, wouldn’t she?

“Please,” Daenerys said. “There’s no need to be so formal. Nor so tense. I know how it must seem, me conspiring to speak to you alone. But I have only good intentions.”

She smiled yet again. It was a kind smile, but Cersei’s smiles had seemed kind too, at first. Brienne had never had the talent for immediately discerning falseness. She wasn’t sure if she smiled back. If she even _could_.

“Of course, your grace,” she said anyway.

“I should have sought you out before now, anyway. I was watching you in the yard, before the battle. You fought Grey Worm and you won.”

“The first few times, yes. He’s very adaptable. He beat me the third.”

“Did he? And the fourth?”

“I adapt quickly as well, your grace.”

Daenerys laughed, and it was young and clear and bright, and Brienne wanted to believe it. She could hear Jaime’s soft breathing beside her. She could remember the way it had slowed, and the way he had sagged against her on the battlefield, his hand still clinging to her arm. She had saved him, and she would not regret it, even if he hated her for it. She could never regret keeping him alive.

“Good. I’m glad to hear it. I’ve seen female warriors in my travels, but never as strong as you. I had worried for you, when you went with Robb Stark to fight. I was concerned that perhaps things would be different on the battlefield. I am only a young girl, and I know nothing of war except what I have seen from a distance, but I know how different it must be from sparring safely in a courtyard. I should have known better. You were stunning to watch.”

“Thank you,” Brienne managed, though she wasn’t sure that was the right thing to say. She had hated every second of it. She had always hated true fighting. She was good at it. She was built for it. She still hated killing. And every man in Lannister armor had worn Ser Jaime’s face until she fought the man for real and had endured what she had prayed she would not.

“You must know that you made an impression. The entire army saw you strike down the Kingslayer. They also saw your regret. It was a powerful image.”

Sansa, if she was here, would know what that meant to Daenerys. _A powerful image_. It didn’t sound like an overly bad thing, but what kind of image had it been to the dragon queen? Did powerful mean that the queen thought it would help her cause or hurt it? Sansa would know exactly how to respond. Brienne was not Sansa. Was Daenerys angry that Brienne had shown her care for Jaime? Was she touched? Was she just genuinely making conversation? Brienne didn’t know. But her shoulders were high with tension, and she didn’t trust. Her own feelings were so unsettled. She couldn’t devote any energy to interpreting anyone else’s.

“Ser Jaime and I…” she started, but she found any sort of explanation too embarrassing to continue. Bluntness was the answer, as it always seemed to be with her. “He tricked me. He didn’t block an easy strike. I wanted him to yield, but he preferred to die.”

“And yet you would not have me kill him. You shielded him from me when you believed that I would. Even as he tried to tell you to go.”

Had he done that? Brienne didn’t remember that at all. She barely remembered seeing Daenerys there. Just the dragon. It hadn’t even looked real. She remembered _that_. Remembered the shock of it and the confusion of it, seeing that giant creature so close, but everything else was Jaime. Her hand was on his wound. His blood was tacky on her fingers. His forehead was pressed against her neck. She was keeping him steady.

“Ser Jaime is not the man that everyone says he is,” she managed to say. She brought herself away from that battlefield forcefully. She couldn’t linger.

“He killed my father,” Daenerys said. There was an apology in her voice, like she hadn’t meant to mention it so soon but couldn’t help it.

“Yes,” Brienne admitted. She hesitated. Hovered, her mouth still gaping open. She looked at him. Jaime. Still sleeping in the bed. His head was turned towards her now. He looked peaceful, younger and yet older at the same time. Frail. He had wanted to die, and he had chosen her hand as the one to do it. Yet here she was, still saving him. _Forgive me_ , she thought. “Ser Jaime killed your father in defense of the population of Kings Landing, your grace.” She took a sharp breath, half expecting Jaime’s eyes to fly open in fury, but they didn’t. He was still asleep. Drugged and sated. A thousand miles away. Perhaps in his dreams, he was dead. Perhaps in his dreams, he was with his sister. Brienne looked away from him and found Daenerys watching. She breathed more easily. It was a betrayal, but it was a betrayal she could live with. _Forgive me._ “Your father planned to ignite the stores of wildfire that he kept beneath the city. He knew that he had lost to the Lannister ambush, and he knew that they were coming. He ordered his men to light the wildfire. _Burn them all_ , he said. Ser Jaime was the only Kingsguard in the throne room. He killed them. Your father and the pyromancers and anyone who would have carried out the order. He killed them, and he saved the lives of everyone who lived in the city.”

“Is that what he told you?” Daenerys asked. Brienne felt her anger mounting. She could not show it.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s the story he told me when he was sick from infection after they took his hand. He had no reason to lie. And I believe him. He kept the secret, and he endured his reputation for years. I’ve kept the secret as well.” 

“Why?”

“It wasn’t my secret.”

“Why was it ever a secret? If my father was as mad as people claim…”

“No one would have believed him,” Brienne said. Not that Jaime had said as much, but she understood. “It furthered his father’s goals. It was what his sister would have wanted. What other reason would he need? If he told them, they would have assumed he was trying to save face.

Daenerys gave a half nod and a half shrug, as if to say she would consider it. She looked past Brienne, and Brienne tried not to feel tense as the queen’s eyes lingered on Jaime.

“Tyrion said that his brother never told him _why_ he killed my father. But Tyrion guessed something similar to the story you’ve told. He said that his brother was never the same after he killed Aerys. That there was something different about him.”

“He would know better than I would, your grace,” Brienne said. She sounded desperate, she knew. Desperate to be away from this conversation. Desperate to _not_ take responsibility for knowing Jaime in that way.

“Apparently not,” Daenerys said with amusement. “He told _you_ why. He didn’t tell Tyrion.”

“The circumstances…” Brienne said quietly. Daenerys cut her off.

“He allowed you to cut him down. He tricked you, as you said, into cutting him down. Was he so craven to face execution?”

“It wasn’t,” Brienne started. She simmered. “He isn’t craven. The things he has survived…” She breathed out. She would not look at him. She was showing too much of her heart already. She could see the sympathy on Daenerys’s face when the dragon queen looked at her. Saw her bulky, ugly frame and saw how she must look as she sat beside Jaime’s bed. She wondered yet again what they had looked like as he bled in her arms on that battlefield. Her monstrous form trying to bend itself into womanliness as she held him and sobbed. She loved him. She loved him, and he had been dying, and she hadn’t had time for anything else, but now she did, and she was humiliated. She met the eyes of the dragon queen again, defiant. “He is a good man. He _is_. He is capable of honor. I know it has eaten away at him that he could not stop his sister sooner. And what she did with wildfire…Ser Jaime could not have supported that.”

“And yet he fought for her.”

“He _lost_ for her,” Brienne insisted. “He could have given me a fight, but he didn’t. He wanted the battle to end. He knew it would end if he fell.”

“Did he tell you that? He spoke to you, after. I remember wondering what he said.

“No, your grace. But I know his thoughts.” Daenerys smiled sadly again, and Brienne took a deeper breath, trying to steady. “I cannot excuse the choices he has lately made, your grace. I have never attempted to. I am sworn to the Starks, and I remain loyal to them. I know that my words are meaningless, but…”

“They aren’t. You’re here because your words have meaning to me,” Daenerys promised. She was so earnest. She leaned in and put her hand delicately on Brienne’s knee. Small and perfect, her nails beautiful and trim. Her eyes were wide with earnestness. She was one of the most beautiful women Brienne had ever seen. What would Ser Jaime see if Brienne looked like Daenerys instead?

“He’s a good man,” Brienne said quietly. “He is. But he has lived his life in service of his family. Of his sister. He has allowed them to blacken everything he touches. I have never…” She swallowed, hating to say it aloud. “I have never seen anyone love with the kind of fervor with which Ser Jaime loves. When he was mad with infection, his sister was all he could speak of. I never knew love to be so powerful that it could destroy a person, but it has destroyed him. He didn’t want Cersei to win. He wanted to die. He wanted to fail her, but he couldn’t let himself betray her.”

_He asked me to do it, instead._

Daenerys hummed thoughtfully, and she pulled her hand back with another sympathetic smile.

“My own family…we wed brother and sister for centuries. I used to believe when I was younger that I would marry my own brother. I don’t think I would have loved him. I haven’t heard very many stories of my mother’s love for my father. My own love…even when I lost it, it didn’t destroy me. Perhaps your Ser Jaime is a special kind of man. It’s always women in the stories who are ruined by love.”

She laughed a little, but it was brittle, and Brienne swallowed back her own brittle feelings as well.

“He has done many good and bad things. Like any of us.”

“Not any of us,” Daenerys said with a significant smile for Brienne herself, but Brienne’s words seemed to hit her. She looked at Jaime again, and then she stood. “You’ve said he loves his sister. But that doesn’t stop you from loving him.”

Brienne did laugh, then. She couldn’t help it. Was this her fate? To have every single person she met throw her obvious affections in her face? Jaime had done it when they were about Renly, but he hadn’t made any mention of her obvious regard for him. No, but everyone else in the whole of Westeros had.

_Kingslayer’s whore_ , they called her in the Stark camp when they thought she wasn’t listening. Was it worse because it wasn’t true? Was it worse because she was no one’s whore, just a pathetic pining maiden who yearned after a man who only wanted his sister?

“Forgive me, your grace,” she said. “But I don’t see what that has to do with anything. I am sworn to the Starks, and Ser Jaime stands against them. There is nothing else to say. He loves his sister to ruin. I don’t love him to the same.”

Daenerys was still smiling. She stepped closer. She looked very earnest. She reminded Brienne so much of Catelyn Stark, for a moment. Enough to make Brienne have to look away. She didn’t look anything like Brienne’s former lady. But there was something so sad and so knowing in her expression. Catelyn had guessed Brienne’s regard for Renly, too. Just as Jaime had. Jaime had been mocking and cruel about it, but Catelyn had been so _sorry._ It had felt worse than Jaime’s jests, in truth.

“That’s why your words matter,” Daenerys said. “I chose on the battlefield to show my father’s murderer the mercy that I did not believe he had shown my father. I chose it because I saw your compassion, and I knew that I would not win your good will if I killed him, and because I knew that the men around you would see your love as well. They know you to be an honorable woman. They know your king to be the same. I wanted to understand your affections for him. I wanted to understand you so that I could feel comfortable asking. When Jaime Lannister wakes, I could put him through a trial. You could be called to give evidence. I could send him back to his sister in exchange for something else that I want. I could keep him here. I would say that it’s up to his behavior, but that’s not entirely true.” Her eyes were boring into Brienne’s now, very serious. “Would you vouch for him, Lady Brienne?”

Brienne looked at Jaime’s sleeping form. He had turned on his side at some point when she wasn’t looking, and she worried about his stitches. His brow was furrowed as if he was in pain. She remembered the feeling of her sword sinking into him. She remembered the way his golden hand caught on the moonlight when he waved to her from the tunnel at Riverrun, letting her escape with Robb Stark and the Blackfish. She remembered his desperation to die, and the way he apologized after, and the way he had seemed so unlike himself as to be another person entirely. Mad with something that she didn’t understand and could only hope to _help_ , in some way, if he let her.

And yet still Jaime, beneath it all. A good man who had struggled and fought and _tried_. _I wasn’t strong enough_ , he had said. But he wanted to be.

“Yes,” she said. It wasn’t a question at all. “Yes. I would vouch for him gladly.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Fear of the Water by SYML
> 
> as a reminder: there's a spotify playlist just called Honor Compels Me with all the songs on it!


	35. Cersei II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cersei receives a message from the dragon queen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for all your kindness and understanding! I was hoping this could be a 2 chapter day, but I unexpectedly had to go get a new phone, so my time is more limited. There might be some time later tonight, though, so we'll see!

Qyburn was still speaking.

Did the man _ever_ shut up? Couldn’t he see she wasn’t listening? Her eyes were on the box. The messenger had delivered it into Qyburn’s hands, but Qyburn hadn’t opened it. He was too busy _explaining_ the messenger’s presence, as if it wasn’t obvious: another threat from the dragon queen. She had sent messengers before. But not like this.

“Hang him,” she said. “From the battlements. With the others.”

Her men jumped to follow her orders, and she was able to breathe again. Qyburn had stopped speaking. She turned to look at him.

“Give me the box,” she said.

The messenger was shouting threats and promises of fire as he was dragged away. She didn’t listen. He would join the others soon. Spies and other messengers who had dared to threaten her on behalf of whatever idiot sent them. Hopefully this one would be the last. She had grown weary of them long ago, but _this_ …

Her hands did not shake as she took the box from Qyburn. It was a rich, almost black mahogany, inlaid with gold, which felt like an insult. It felt like something Olenna Tyrell would have done. _Send it to her with gold_ , she would have said. _Since she’s so bloody fond of the stuff._

Cersei knew what lay inside the box. The messenger had smiled when he said it. But there were things he _hadn’t_ said, and everything hinged on it.

_Which hand?_ Cersei had wanted to scream it in his face, and she wanted to scream it even now that he was gone. _Which hand has Daenerys Targaryen sent back to me?_

She flipped open the lid to the box, and she swallowed her relief. The golden hand within was in pieces, the fingers sliced off and laid beside it with no attempt to reattach them. But it was gold. All metal. She had to touch it, to be certain. Her own eyes couldn’t be trusted.

Her fingers brushed up against it, cold and unyielding. There were spots of tarnished red. _Blood_. They hadn’t even bothered to clean it. She touched that, too. It was dried and flaked away easily when she scraped her fingernail along it. Brown from age. The messenger had ridden hard, but not hard enough. It was possible that Jaime was already dead. _Wounded_ , the messenger had said, but he had claimed not to know how badly. _By the Maid of Tarth_ , he had said, too. She was meant to believe that the ridiculous cow had turned on Jaime. Surely that had to be a trap of some kind, a trick to send Cersei scrambling to defeat the north and weaken her position in the capital. What reason would the Maid of Tarth have for attacking _Jaime_? She had loved him. Unless maybe she finally realized he would never be hers. Women with no hope could be savages about things like that. Cersei knew that well.

She closed the box and thrust it back at Qyburn without looking at him. He took it, like a good Hand, and he kept it close to his chest.

“Your grace,” he said. There was no question in his tone. There were no demands, either. He was the only one she trusted. 

“Jaime is lost to us,” she said. Her voice didn’t shake at all. She remembered the first time she heard he had been taken, years ago, by the Starks. She had wept for him, then. She had wept because she knew that her failures might mean his death. She had wept for frustration because things kept going wrong when this was supposed to make it easier for them to be _together_. Joffrey, her son, her child, had sneered at her tears as a woman’s weakness, and she had loathed him for only a moment. She had dried her tears and tucked them away inside her, where Joffrey and Tyrion and her father couldn’t see. Myrcella, she had always been sweet. When Joffrey wasn’t around, she had climbed up into Cersei’s lap, though she had been too big by then, and she had mussed Cersei’s dress. She had thrown her arms around her mother’s neck, and she had kissed her on the cheek. _Don’t worry,_ she had whispered into Cersei’s ear. _I will cry for him, too._

Cersei had no more tears. Not for Joffrey or sweet Myrcella or innocent Tommen. She had no more tears for Jaime. The Starks would have been kinder jailers than this Daenerys, especially considering what Jaime had done to secure the throne for the Lannisters, all those years ago. No, Jaime was as good as dead. She would not be trapped into trade negotiations, as the messenger suggested. She would not invite the dragon woman to her city to speak about surrender. She was giving Jaime up as dead, and still she did not weep. Why? Where had all her tears for him gone? The dragon queen had him.

No, not the dragon queen. _Tyrion_. Tyrion had taken him. The dragon queen would have simply killed him, but taking him alive…that had Tyrion’s stamp on it. Even before the messenger said his name as Hand to this _child_ playing at queen, Cersei had known. She warned Jaime, hadn’t she? She _told_ him that Tyrion was coming back. It wasn’t as simple as letting the little imp go and then forgetting. How could Jaime have been so foolish?

“Your grace, perhaps there is a way we could bargain.”

“She demands a full surrender,” Cersei said. She longed to sit down on her throne. She always felt most powerful there. She longed to sit _anywhere_. She longed to take off this cursed dress and roll naked on her silk sheets. She longed to have Jaime near. She longed for the days when they had to be quiet so they didn’t wake the children in the other rooms. When every moment was a secret. Every stolen second with her love a victory against her father and her husband and _all of them_ for trying to tell her what to be.

“As an opening,” Qyburn suggested. The fool man wasn’t optimistic. He grimaced as he said it. Cersei admired the attempt.

“She wants me to bend the knee,” she said. “She is here to conquer my kingdom and burn me alive. Am I to let her?”

“No. No, of course not, your grace. I wasn’t suggesting that.”

He could see it, couldn’t he? He could see that she was wearing around the edges. Jaime had been the first to notice. Of course he had. He knew what she was like before, when she was better. Lately, she felt as if bits of her were falling away. Shed like her hair when they cut it from her head. Scraped raw off her body like the grime she’d had to scratch at the skin of her arms to remove when they finally released her from that hellish prison and she was allowed to bathe herself once again.

Hewn from her body, like Jaime’s hand.

“Give me that,” she said. She took the box back. Qyburn was looking at her warily again. She turned away. “I need a moment.”

“Of course, your grace,” he said.

He knew. They all knew. He left, bringing most of her men with him. Only Clegane remained behind; he knew she did not consider him when she wanted everyone else to leave. She sat on her throne at last. She had aged a thousand years since she sat here with Tommen on her lap and prepared both of them to die. If only that had been the end of it.

_No. Enough of this woman’s weakness. You are queen._

It was her father’s voice she heard, and it was her father’s censure she still feared, even now. She banished that weak-willed wish for rest.

She opened the box again. Jaime’s hand taunted her. He must have fought for her so valiantly. It didn’t matter that he had seemed to hate her when he left. He would have forgotten his baseless anger within days. He would have grown to miss her. That was exactly what had happened to her, and they had always been alike in everything.

She brought the box with her up to her room. She stood on the balcony and looked at it again, his halved hand. She looked at the empty place where the sept once stood. She still could not cry. She wondered how badly Jaime was hurt. He wouldn’t have allowed himself to be taken unless he was hurt. Even without his best hand, he would have kept fighting. How long had he lasted in the battle he had fought for her? How much pain had he been in? Was he in pain now?

She found it difficult to imagine what he would have looked like, desperate to win her war on that battlefield. It was easier to remember him as was when they were children, when their love had been uncomplicated and true. Their kisses innocent of any hatred. Their caresses filled with want and devoid of anything sharper than growing curiosity. She had kissed him, and he had kissed her back, and then they were one. It was meant to be forever. They were _divine,_ once. What had they become?

Their boy. Their child. She had driven him to that. She had blown up his precious wife and blown up his precious sept, and she had driven him to it.

What had she done?

No. She closed the box. She went back into her room. She set the box on her bed. She paced to the window. She longed to open her dress, loosen the armor she wore everywhere, but she didn’t dare. She could hear the creaking footsteps of Clegane as he settled against the door outside. _I am safe_. She wasn’t, but she wanted to be. She _would_ be. She would prove it to herself. Her fingers hesitated at her collar, but not for long. She pulled at the clasps and tore at the stays. She stripped the dress from her limbs, tearing it apart. The leatherwork tore slowly. The hooks and laces were threaded on too tightly. She bit back screams of frustration. When it was done, she was in her smallclothes and shivering. It had gotten colder. Those maudlin Stark words were finally coming true. Something else for them to feel so fucking righteous about.

Her hands shook as she poured herself a glass of wine. The box haunted her from where it sat. She didn’t look at it. Was it anything like how it had been in the Stark camp? He had told her so little about that. She had always wondered. Perhaps she should have asked. But he had taken too long, and when he came back, she found herself hating him more than she had once loved him, and the love had never grown back right. Was he locked up somewhere in chains? Was he cold? Were they even feeding him? She thought of her own Black Cells. She thought of the screams she did not allow herself to hear when she got too close to them. No. _No._ Olenna Tyrell would never…would she? She wished…

No. It was too late for wishes. She drank her wine. She longed to crawl under the covers. Jaime would have crawled in beside her. They were just children. He would have wound her hair around his finger, making the curl bounce free as he tugged it. He would have kissed her hand. A boy playing at knighthood. Her heart would have fluttered. Where had that gone?

She was safe. Clegane was outside. She was safe.

Dragons could scale walls. Even The Mountain would fall to a dragon queen. She would not be safe beneath her covers. Jaime was gone again. The last time Jaime was gone, he was gone for so long that everything went sour, and when he came back…

_He isn’t my Jaime. My Jaime is dead. This is a man in a mask, pretending._

She had had the thought so many times.

She picked up the box. She would cast it into the fire. She would melt his golden hand. She would not kneel to the dragon queen. Jaime would not want her to. He would want her to be strong.

Yes. Jaime would want her to be strong. Jaime and their father, too. They would not want her to kneel. _Think of your pride_ , they would say.

Jaime would…

_You can’t win this_ , he would say. _Look around you. Look at our enemies. You can’t win._

He was always saying things like that now, wasn’t he? No. No, he wouldn’t. He would understand. Her Jaime always understood her mind. He would know.

He had looked at her with such disgust.

Not Jaime. Jaime loved her.

Such disdain.

She was remembering wrong again. Jaime never…

And Tywin…he would be proud of her, too. He would understand what she was doing. The legacy she was protecting.

_What legacy?_ Jaime would ask. _It’s just you and me now. Our children are dead._

She should have insisted they try harder for a child. She didn’t have many years left of childbearing. There wasn’t time. Jaime couldn’t be away from her for another year. Not again. She should have had more when there was a chance. Why had she stopped at Tommen? Why had she not started before Joffrey? Their legacy.

Their legacy. What legacy? Jaime was right. There was nothing. An empty keep. Terrified people in the streets. She was guarded by a monster. She was surrounded by monsters. Nipping at her heels. Waiting for her to fall so they could take her place. They all _knew_ , didn’t they? They knew that she was balancing. When she fell…

She would not fall.

_I will not fall._

She could hear the crows outside, feasting on the men she had left hanging there. _Good. Pluck out their eyes. Let her see them when she comes to take my crown. She should not have demanded anything from me. She’s a child._

_Jaime. She has Jaime._

A crow feasting on Jaime’s eyes. Tearing his cheek with its twisted beak.

_No_.

Her dress was too tight. She went to tear it off. But she had already done that. It was her chest that was tight, and she sank into her chair and sobbed. _No. No, you can’t afford tears. You can’t be weak. You can’t be so foolish. You…_

_Jaime. I want Jaime. I want him here. I want my children. I want my father._

_Mother. I want mother, too. I was there when they needed me. I did what they asked of me. I gave my husband my body. I tried to give him my heart. He didn’t want it. None of them did._

_Only Jaime._

It was too much. It was too much for any one person to shoulder alone, but they had all left her here. Everyone she had ever loved, and she was the one who remained. She should have been glad of it, but how could she? What was it all for?

_For myself. For me. Finally, for what I want._

Was this what Aerys felt?

Was this what he felt when he saw the rebels gaining footholds? Did he realize that he had no one left who loved him? _He was a mad old man, and what am I becoming? A mad woman, old before her time. Three dead children. My husband is dead. My true husband lost to me._ _Jaime. Jaime, please. I need you. Come back to me._

She had turned to see him in the doorway when he came back. His golden hair gone brown and gray. The dirt and smell of him. That awful stump. Hideous. _I should have kissed him. Maybe he wouldn’t have left if I had kissed him._

_You forget. You beautiful fool. I didn’t leave. You sent me away._

She had stopped crying, but the tears still leaked from her eyes. She kept wiping at them, furious. She should not cry. They should not see her like this.

Was this what Aerys felt? Did he worry what people saw? Did he feel strong when he sat on his throne? Did he feel weak in his rooms afterward? Did he ever cry?

No. No, he hadn’t. She knew that. She shouldn’t cry, either.

If Jaime stood in that doorway now, in the way he did then. What would he see? Would he see a madwoman?

Aerys had trusted him, too. The young, golden lion with his glittering smile and his clear, bright eyes. Not yet so sharp. Not yet so hard. He had been little more than a boy. She had always hoped that Joffrey would grow to be like him. Jaime jousted and fought and laughed, and every maiden wanted him, and his eyes only lingered on her. Power before she knew what power was. Power before she had any. Every kiss, she took what he offered her. _Here, sister_ , he said. _Take some of it. It’s yours_. She had wanted all of it, and she had taken.

What had driven Jaime at last? He never told her. She never asked. What were the dragon king's last moments like? Had he raved? Begged? Had Jaime stood impassively over his king and built up his determination? He had been so _young_. How had he done it? How had he found the will? Jaime never was strong like that. How had he done it?

Would he find that strength again?

Would she be too mad for him to stomach?

Would he stand above her with his sword? Would he look down at her on the throne? Would he say a single word before he drove the blade through her back?

No. She stood. She crossed to the balcony. No. Jaime wouldn’t kill her. She wouldn’t give him the chance.

What match would a one-handed man be against The Mountain?

And he wasn’t here, anyway. He had gotten himself captured. He had failed her, the way everyone else had. She had nothing to worry about anymore. Not from him. Jaime was gone. He was as good as dead. He had killed the dragon queen’s father, and so Daenerys Targaryen would burn him, and Cersei would not think of that. She would not think of him at all.

She would tell Qyburn to order the pyromancers to step up Wildfire production. She had more than enough left over for the Keep, but she wanted more. She wanted as much as they could give her. She wanted the entire city filled with it. Dripping green and beautiful. The walls of her keep couldn’t keep her safe from dragons, but if the worst came, if the dragon queen did not give up her foolish quest, Cersei would make sure that the taste of victory turned to ashes in her mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is I'll Keep Coming by Low Roar


	36. Jon V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon and Sansa go over their messages from Highgarden

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to everyone still reading and commenting! I am using my literal 10 minutes time to myself today to post this chapter so you're all welcome lmao

They had known of the outcome of the battle for more than a week, thanks to Bran’s powers and thanks to Robb’s initial letters, but those letters were short, spare things, and Bran had given them few important details. They knew that Robb and Brienne and Davos were all alive and mostly unhurt. They knew that Daenerys had been pleased with Robb’s choice to fight, but that their forming friendship had been strained in the aftermath. They knew that Brienne had nearly killed the Kingslayer, and that he had allowed her to do it rather than yield. They knew that Highgarden had been protected, and that the bulk of the Lannister army was split now into two fairly even camps. Half of them were hostages. Half had joined the dragon queen willingly. And many of the hostages, Robb had written, were waiting for Jaime Lannister to be well enough to choose for himself; they would follow their commander.

Sansa had worried about the growing power of the Targaryen army and what it meant for Robb and Brienne, trapped there practically alone and largely undefended, but she seemed in better spirits that morning when she came into the office they had been sharing since Robb left.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Letters from Robb and Brienne,” she said. She handed them over to him. She was smiling, and she looked easier than she had looked in days. He was relieved. There was so little she would allow him to help with. Jon had taken on the bulk of physical preparations, helping his men fortify Winterfell and dig trenches and keep a running inventory of everything. But there was really only so much of that kind of work to do, and everything else seemed to be piling up as Sansa tried to sift through it on her own. “Negotiations are going well.”

“That’s good, Sansa,” he said. She met his eyes and grinned a little, and he actually _saw_ the moment she remembered to avert her gaze and look away. He tried not to sigh. He wasn’t successful. Arya insisted Sansa wasn’t angry with him, but Jon was used to feeling guilty for just about everything. It was easy enough to start to feel guilty about this, too. He wasn’t sure what he had done, what he had said. He had been so careful to act _normal_ around her, but lately…

He focused his attention back on the letters, desperate for something to talk to her about. She was still _here_ , waiting for him to finish. Usually she ducked out as soon as she had delivered whatever messages she had come to deliver in the first place.

Brienne’s letter was rather short. It was obvious that Sansa had asked her for more details, because there were some attempts at expanding on some information, but they weren’t very good ones. It felt very _Brienne_ , and Jon nearly laughed, but found he couldn’t. He felt sorry for her, really. Fighting someone she plainly cared for. It was a horrible feeling, and Jon hadn’t even been the one to kill Ygritte. He could imagine what Brienne must have felt when she thought she had killed the Kingslayer.

None of it showed in her letter, of course. She wrote a dry, soldier’s account of the battle, and only Robb’s letter hinted at her distress, and the fact that she had yet to go back to Jaime Lannister’s rooms now that the Kingslayer was out of danger and awake again. Robb’s letter was self-deprecating and full of mirth about his own battle. Pretending at bravado for Sansa’s sake, as if she hadn’t seen the immediate aftermath of the Battle of the Bastards. As if she didn’t know what kind of hell war could be.

Jon looked up to watch her as she wrote at her desk across the room. She was sitting right by the window, and she wrote the way she did everything else: as if it was the most important thing in the world. Her whole attention on one task. Maybe that was why it had happened, those awful longings that had driven them apart. He had fallen for the intensity of her focus when she treated _him_ that way. Like he was so important. Maybe he was just that simple. Maybe it was just that easy for him to turn something that was innocent into something that was warped and twisted. Maybe it wasn’t as he originally feared.

Coming back wrong. Coming back to life as something broken was the easiest explanation. It was the only one that made sense. What else would have caused it? Some terrifying magic brought him back to life, and he still wasn’t sure why. Why him? Why, out of everyone alive? The red woman wanted him to believe that he had a bigger part to play, but she’d said the same thing about Stannis once, and Stannis was dead.

Still, there was no denying that her magic had worked. Her magic or the magic of the god she believed in. He didn’t know. He didn’t understand any of it. He hadn’t wanted anything to do with it until Sansa arrived at Castle Black and persuaded him to fight.

Was it any wonder he blamed his resurrection? It was an easy thing to blame. When he breathed again after dying, everything was sharper. Harder. More bitter. But Sansa _wasn’t_. When he saw her again for the first time since they were children, she was the softest thing he had seen in years. Soft and scared and looking at him like she didn’t know what to expect but _desperately_ hoped it was the brother she remembered. He didn’t care about the red woman's claims of his greater purpose. But when Sansa pushed him to try and win back their home, he found that he cared about _that._ That could be his purpose.

He wanted her close when she was only his sister, and he wanted her still closer when Robb revealed him as cousin, though it changed nothing in truth. They had believed each other to be siblings for their whole childhood. If things had been different, if he had grown up in the Red Keep, Rhaegar’s son, they might have even been matched. But he had been her bastard half-brother once, and though she loved him better now than she had before, her bastard half-brother was all he would ever be. At least when he blamed the red woman’s magic, he was blaming something other than himself.

But then Arya came back, and Jon realized that his unnatural wants weren’t from magic at all. Arya was his sister. He loved her the same as he always had. She was the little girl who ignored her mother’s wishes and who always wanted to play with her brothers. She scoffed at the possibility that him being their cousin would mean that anything should change. She had kept Needle for all this time out of love for him, and he loved her the same. It was a relief, and it was something he needed, but it took away from him the explanation that would have saved him the most grief.

If it wasn’t the red woman’s magic, it was just him. Just Jon Snow.

Sam had actually made a joke about it. He had arrived at Winterfell one day, unannounced, with Gilly and Little Sam in tow. He’d brought books from the Citadel, and he had scarcely been at Winterfell for ten minutes before he was asking for a private audience so he could speak to Jon about something. He had spread the book out on the table in front of them in the empty library, his voice whispered low. He talked about Jon's parents. Jon’s parents, and their _wedding._

“Gilly found it,” he said. “Isn’t it brilliant? You have a claim to the throne.”

Jon shook his head.

“I’ve never wanted any throne,” he said.

“Well I’m not saying you have to take it! But still! You’re a prince. A proper prince.”

“I’m a Targaryen,” Jon said. The words tasted bitter on his tongue. “And the Targaryens were overthrown. That’s all I am. You’d better not start calling me your grace. I’ll send you back to the wall if you do.”

“You wouldn’t,” Sam said with a chirpy smile. “Because then I’d tell everyone you’re a prince and it would be madness. You’d have people fawning all over you. Trying to convince you to take the crown. You’d hate it.”

“You can’t tell anyone about this, Sam,” Jon reminded him, though he could not help but smile at his friend.

“I won’t. I wouldn’t. Well, I talked to Bran about it, but Bran already knew.”

“I wonder why _he_ didn’t tell me,” Jon mused.

“Oh, because it’s not important yet,” Sam said blithely. “That’s what he told me, anyway. He’s fascinating, isn’t he?”

“That’s one word for it.”

“He said you don’t want to be king anyway.”

“He’s right.”

“He says that you’ll always be a Stark, too.”

Jon had looked at him then, and he saw Sam's soft, reassuring smile.

“I’m a Snow,” he said.

“You’d be a Sand, technically. Born in Dorne and all, right? And you’re not a bastard anyway, so you wouldn’t be either. You’re a Targaryen, but you’ll always be a Stark. That’s what Bran said, and he’s right. Which is good news for your sisters, I guess.” He laughed at his own joke, and Jon looked at him quizzically. The laughter died, and Sam stammered out, “you know. Because Targaryens married their sisters? That’s all I was saying.”

Jon had forced a laugh that likely sounded fake, and then he had moved them away to other things, but still it lingered. It hardly seemed possible, but was _that_ it? He knew it likely had nothing to do with blood. People said bastards had unnatural lusts and wants because of how they had been made, but he never thought _that_ was true. And the Lannister twins weren’t Targaryens, and they didn’t need to be to want each other. But maybe that was it. Maybe it was just his blood, disregarding the laws of men and telling his body and mind that it was all right to want the woman who had once been his sister.

Sansa’s head was bent over the letter she was writing. She was smiling faintly. The sunlight was in her hair. Red and shimmering. He’d tried to tell himself a few times that red hair was all it was. Ygritte had had red hair, too. But they were nothing alike, and Sansa had a softness that he had more than once wished for in his Wildling lover.

She looked up and caught his eyes, and he smiled.

“I was just thinking of Brienne,” he said. “Perhaps it would have been better if she’d stayed. I could have gone with Robb instead.”

Sansa frowned at him. He couldn’t seem to say anything right to her, of late. Everything made her frown or look away.

“You’d have killed him,” she finally said. “Brienne wouldn’t have been very happy about that.”

“No, I suppose not.” He looked back down at the letters as if there was more to read, but Sansa was watching him still. He could feel it.

“He loves her too, you know,” she said finally. When Jon looked up, she was smiling. It was a mischievous little smile. A grin. “She doesn’t think he does, but he does. I don’t even know if _he_ knows it.” She took a deep breath. Bracing for something. “I’ve been writing to him. Since not long after Robb got back.”

It took a few moments for those words to sink in. And then, when they did, he couldn’t figure out why she had spoken them.

“Jaime Lannister,” he said. “The Kingslayer.”

Sansa winced and looked chagrined.

“Um,” she said. “Yes.”

“But _why_?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t. It started out all right. We were just being mean back and forth. That seemed appropriate. But.” She shook her head. “Bran told me some things. And Jaime and I wrote about some things. And then he was hurt, and I found I was. Well.”

“Upset,” Jon finished. “Because Jaime Lannister was hurt.”

“Yes,” Sansa admitted.

“Is that who you’re writing now?”

“Yes.”

Jon found himself laughing. He wasn’t sure why. She looked so guilty about it, as if it was this shameful secret. Really, it just seemed so… _Sansa_. To write to someone with the intention of remaining enemies with them and to wind up becoming friends instead. It was almost a relief. Sansa seemed so brittle sometimes. So removed from the girl he remembered. He liked to have reminders like that that she hadn’t changed completely. She was still _Sansa_. He still knew her.

Knew her. Loved her. It was the same thing, wasn’t it? Sansa was made to be loved. She was made for people to care for her. She was more capable than she used to be, and he knew that she could take care of herself. But she had a way about her. It made people want to defend her. Brienne. Theon. Arya. Jon. He wasn’t the only one.

He wasn’t the only one. He needed to remember that. It wasn’t odd. It wasn’t strange. He was just reading it wrong.

“Why are you laughing?” she asked, exasperated. She was trying not to smile. “It isn’t funny. I thought you would be angry.”

“Why would I be angry? It’s…” _Adorable_ came to mind, but he wouldn’t say that. “It’s not like it’s _Cersei_ Lannister. If the two of you want to write letters back and forth about how much you love Brienne, I don’t see that there’s anything to be sorry for. I trust you. I know you aren’t writing him any secrets about our defenses or, I don’t know, the number of men in our armies. You’re too clever for that.”

Sansa smiled a little. She shrugged and looked back down.

“Well,” she said. “Maybe. It still _feels_ weird.”

Yes, lots of things felt weird. There were dragons again. There were red priestesses who brought people back to life. There were mad queens blowing up septs with wildfire.

“You have a good heart,” he told her. She looked startled, her eyes wide on him. He didn’t want to just leave it there, but he was almost too taken aback by his own words to speak again. He finished, “I’m not surprised that you found common cause with someone you thought you should hate.”

Her smile grew. Surprised and pleased. Her cheeks colored. He looked away before he got too hung up on it.

“Sometimes it’s not such a good thing,” Sansa admitted. She left her letter to dry and walked over to take the pages back from him. He gave them gladly.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Trusting people,” Sansa said. She handed him another letter from her desk. He scanned it quickly.

“Olenna Tyrell,” he said.

“I haven’t figured out how to reply to it yet,” Sansa admitted. “She and her granddaughter were kind to me when I was trapped in Kings Landing. I thought for a time that they would help me escape. I still don’t know what would have happened if the Lannisters hadn’t married me to Tyrion. I was meant to marry Loras. Go to Highgarden. Be _safe_. Now I have to wonder how much of their kindness was because they wanted to use me. Olenna Tyrell is a clever woman. She’s also a woman with cause to want revenge against Cersei. It’s a kind letter. Long, and filled with sorrow. It’s also the first time she has reached out to me since Kings Landing. And conveniently, I’m in more of a position to offer her whatever it is she wants. I don’t know what to believe.”

“What _does_ she want?”

“I don’t know yet. She wants an answer, first. She probably expects a polite, empty-headed reply. I was still so stupid when she knew me. I doubt she expects me to have changed so much. Once I send her _that,_ then it’ll come to what she wants from me. I don’t think she has any more sons or grandsons she might want to marry me off to. Nor any daughters or granddaughters for you or Robb. I can’t imagine she wants us to agree to shelter her _here_. It seems she means to stay in Highgarden until Cersei arrives personally to kill her.”

“Suppose I’d rather be killed by Cersei than the Night King,” Jon said. Sansa exhaled a soft, gentle laugh.

“Maybe,” she said. “I’d like to see them try and kill each other.”

“Aye. That would be a good way to handle most of our problems at once.”

“She might want Littlefinger’s help,” Sansa mused. Jon tried not to smile as he watched her puzzle through it. He had missed this. This was what it had been like almost every night after they took Winterfell back. Sansa seemed to like the simplicity of thinking aloud. It was the freedom of it, he thought. She knew she could trust him. She could say anything. He wondered if this meant that she was beginning to trust him again. He wondered why she had ever stopped.

“If she wanted Littlefinger, she’d have written to Littlefinger,” he pointed out. “And Arya would have told you.”

“Maybe,” she said. She still seemed unsettled. “It’s…difficult to tell. That’s one thing I envy in Arya.” She smiled at him. Exhausted and scared and beautiful. He couldn’t look away from her.

“What, not the faces?” he asked. She laughed helplessly, ducking her head. What was _wrong_ with him?

“No,” Sansa said. “I could do without the faces. But she can always tell when people are lying. She can always tell when _I’m_ lying, and I’ve been told I’m rather good at it. That would be quite a skill to have. I would be able to look Olenna Tyrell in the face, and within a few words I would be able to tell you if she was honest. If her intentions were good. Gods, it would have been such a help for me with Cersei. And with Littlefinger.”

“You wouldn’t need Arya’s skill to help with Littlefinger,” Jon pointed out. “He was _always_ lying.” Sansa laughed at that, as well.

“Well, yes,” she admitted. “But anyone else.”

“Not anyone else.” She looked at him, waiting for the joke. “Not me. You know I’m never lying to you.”

It wasn’t a joke at all. Her eyes opened wider. But she was smiling.

“Of course not,” she said. She hesitated, but then she reached over and squeezed his arm. Her eyes were bright. She was clearly touched. She was touched, and he was horrible. He smiled at her anyway. She didn’t have to _know_ that he was horrible. He could just be horrible quietly, loathing himself all the while.

Sansa finally left, folding her letter to Jaime Lannister, looking lighter now that she had shed this secret that had apparently been bothering her. Jon wished that he could unburden himself without ruining everything and making her feel a thousand times worse.

Maybe it wasn’t that he came back wrong. Maybe it wasn’t anything as dark as that. It wasn’t just want. That was only part of the problem. It was something else, too. Something softer. Maybe it wasn’t the red woman’s magic, or him being broken. Maybe it was just that he had never known Sansa before, and meeting her again was like meeting an entirely new person. That was all it was. He would be able to get rid of this horrible part of him eventually.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is On the Nature of Daylight by Max Richter


	37. Sansa VIII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bran has some more warnings, and Sansa and Arya talk about daggers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: I'm gonna start posting faster!  
> also me: *doesn't even get NEAR a laptop all day yesterday*
> 
> one of these days I'm going to actually fulfill my own promises, but it definitely wasn't yesterday!

Days passed in Winterfell after the battle at Highgarden, and Sansa worried. She worried for Robb and Brienne and Davos, so far away from her. They had captured a big part of Cersei’s army. They had captured Cersei’s _brother_. They were pleased with their victories, but Sansa knew Cersei better than they did, and she could not believe that they were safe. Three dragons or no dragons. Armies or no armies. No one was safe with Cersei on the throne.

She worried, too, about Jaime. Tyrion’s last letter said that Jaime was awake but “not doing well”, whatever that meant. Jaime hadn’t replied to her first attempt at a letter, and she didn’t particularly feel like revealing their friendship to Tyrion of all people, so she didn’t bother asking for clarification. Her second letter to Jaime would be much more sternly worded than the first. Now that Jon and Arya and, obviously, Bran all knew about the letters, she felt less odd about it. Jon hadn’t been angry at all. Jon had been _amused_ , and fond, and it still made her stomach squirm pleasantly to think about it.

Robb's letters were almost always about his efforts to win the dragon queen’s help against the dead, though Jon worried that he wasn’t moving fast enough. It seemed from his letters that Robb was spending most of his time working with Olenna Tyrell and her people to prepare to evacuate Highgarden to Dragonstone; apparently, the Tyrell matriarch had been convinced to abandon her home. They were taking the food stores with them so that Cersei couldn’t send her remaining armies to loot it afterwards. Sansa had little hope that any of the food would eventually find its way North as part of negotiations; the food would probably not travel well, and the dragon queen’s force was large. They would consume a lot of it on their journey, and more of it when they were back at Dragonstone.

The Blackfish in the Vale had taken full control of the lords, and he once again had Robert Arryn in hand. Sansa had to pity him for that, but he was a firm man; if anyone could keep Sweetrobin in line, it was him. And the Vale had food, and they were willing to trade for it. The north would not starve.

_The north will not starve, and you are safe. Littlefinger is dead, and you are safe. Arya and Jon and Bran are with you, and you are safe._

Again and again until she could believe it.

Jon’s friend Sam arrived one day with books and a pretty girl named Gilly, along with a little boy that he had claimed as his own. Jon had told lots of stories about Sam, and it was exciting to meet him in person. He was _nice_ , too, and stumbled over his words in a way that made Sansa feel safe. She’d had enough of silver tongues and unmet promises. She liked how genuine he was.

She liked how Jon seemed around him, too. He seemed more full, more whole. Sansa watched them from a distance as Jon played with little Sam and laughed at big Sam and spoke politely and kindly to Gilly. She kept herself hidden in the shade on the walk above, drinking it in.

Jon was _happy_. He was with his friends. Not everything had been so horrible for him at the Wall.

It made her heart swell to see it, to know that he had been cared for, that he’d had people who cared _about_ him in those long years when she’d thought about him too rarely. He had people who loved him. She was so glad. She knew he’d had a lover, a wildling woman north of the wall, and that the woman had died. She hadn’t counted on _friends_ , too. She liked it. She remembered Shae. Could a handmaiden be a friend? Could that ever be a true friendship?

“Bran wants to speak to us,” Arya said suddenly, beside her. Dressed as Littlefinger again. Sansa didn’t look at her. She closed her eyes. She felt the wind on her face. There was a cold northern chill coming in. Perhaps Sam should have stayed in the south, no matter how important it was that he come here to tell Jon whatever it was that he had to tell him. The north wouldn’t be safe for long. Bran didn’t ask to speak to all of them for no reason.

* * *

They met in the godswood, because it was easiest to make sure that they weren’t watched there. Not that they _needed_ those assurances; Bran always knew when people were listening to them.

 _His_ skills, much like Arya’s, would have been useful in Kings Landing. Sansa was a bit envious about it. Why hadn’t _she_ been granted some helpful power? Maybe things would have been easier if she had been more than just _Sansa._

Then again, from their stories, things hadn’t been easier for Arya and Bran at all. They had all lived through so much, and they were so different now. That they had all survived was a miracle in itself.

Sam arrived to the godswood with Jon, both of them bundled up in their cloaks. Sam smiled at her in greeting, his cheeks round and rosy, and Sansa couldn’t help but smile back. He had seemed a bit afraid of her when they first met. It made her wonder what Jon had told him about her. Sansa: the sister who had been cruel to him when they were children. But only a few days had done away with most of his fear. Sam was an easy person to like, and he was a person who liked easily.

Bran watched them all as they gathered, with the unsettling stare that Sansa hated but would not avoid. She never wanted Bran to notice how uncomfortable he made her. Foolish, of course: how could he _not_ notice? And he didn’t seem to _care_ , either. He didn’t care when Arya snapped at him. He didn’t care when Jon pleaded with him. He didn’t care about anything anymore, did he? Sometimes, Sansa wondered if he felt like _she_ did. Scraped hollow inside, like there was nothing left of him. She never asked. She wanted to pretend she wasn’t afraid. She wanted him to think that she was still the big sister who would chide him playfully and read him stories when he was sick.

When Bran was ready to speak, he simply spoke. There was no prelude. No introduction. No greeting. Just sharp efficiency in his dreamy, unfocused voice. Its monotone was unsettling, unwavering. 

“The Wall will fall soon,” he said.

“That’s impossible,” Sam replied. Of everyone, he seemed most comfortable around Bran, and it gladdened Sansa’s heart that _someone_ could treat him normally. Perhaps it was easier for Sam because he hadn’t known Bran very well before, or perhaps Sam was simply better at being polite about it than the rest of them.

“It isn’t impossible,” Bran said.

“Is there any way to stop it?” Jon asked.

“No. This was always going to happen. There was only delaying it, and it has been delayed as long as it can. We will have little time to prepare, but we _will_ have time. The Night King moves slowly with his army. If you rode out to meet him now, you would be killed, and he would win. The Wall must fall, and we must meet him outside the walls of Winterfell, and we must destroy him here. It is the only way to end the cycle.”

“Simple enough,” Arya said. Back as herself again, she looked somehow _more_ intimidating than Litttlefinger.

“It won’t be simple,” Bran said. He didn’t _sound_ annoyed, but Arya grinned over at Sansa anyway, as if she _had_ annoyed him, and it made Sansa smile despite herself.

“What do we have to do, Bran?” she asked. Bran turned to look at her.

“We need dragonfire,” he said. “Dragonglass.”

“Oh, seven hells,” Arya muttered. “Of course.”

“We need armies from every corner of Westeros. We need food for the winter ahead. We need furs, and we need fire. Wood and stone. Valyrian steel. We need Ice.”

“He’s fucking with us,” Arya said.

“I’m not.”

“Then why’re you trying to sound all grave and mysterious like that?”

“Arya,” Jon and Sansa warned together. Arya threw her hands up.

“He’s messing with us!” she insisted.

“I’m not,” Bran said. His voice was strained. Sansa had to stifle the urge to laugh. Arya didn’t bother.

“You are! It’s like a story. The hero has to gather all this shit and then the clever wizard tells them how to use all of it to defeat the enemy in clever ways. It’s an Old Nan story!”

“Bran,” Jon sighed, ignoring Arya’s annoyed outburst. “We can’t get all of Westeros to fight in this war. Even if they could get here in time, there won’t be any convincing them. People don’t believe the threat is real. The only threat they know is other men, and those are the wars they’ll fight.”

“They will get here in time,” Bran said. “And we need to be ready when they do. The dragonglass is already on its way. Food and furs. And people will come if you ask.” He smiled a little, and there was something more of Bran in his expression then. “You don’t have to convince all of them. You just have to convince _her_.”

* * *

Sam and Jon stayed with Bran afterward to talk some more, but Sansa and Arya walked back towards the castle together. She would write to her uncle Brynden immediately. She would speak to Yohn Royce as well. The Vale would send more men with their food. The glass gardens were producing well, and Tormund had taken to his role as the head of the hunters. He and his people ranged out every few days. Game was scarce, but not so scarce that they were in danger of starving anytime soon. And there would be hides and pelts enough to secure more furs for the men who would be arriving to fight…

Sansa didn’t think of the fighting that was to come. She could do nothing about that, and thinking of it would only bring her back to the Blackwater, and the terror of that night. She would only focus on the things she _could_ control, or her breathing would get too quick and her mind would fall apart again, and she couldn’t afford that. Not as the Lady of Winterfell.

“Are you even listening to me?”

Sansa turned and saw that Arya was watching her. She was flipping that dagger between her fingers again, playing with it. Sansa shook her head.

“No,” she admitted with a smile. Arya laughed openly. “Sorry. I was…”

“Worrying about ten thousand things you don’t need to worry about, probably,” Arya finished. “That’s fine. It wasn’t important anyway. Just wondering.”

“About what?” Sansa asked.

“Nothing,” Arya said. “Just Bran and how Bran-y he’s being. If he’s supposed to be some three-eyed something here to help us, you’d think he’d be less about saying stupid mysterious shit and more about saying ‘look, be at this exact spot at this exact time and you can kill the Night King’. This nonsense about needing swords and fire and dragons. Obviously we need those things, Bran. I don’t know. I’d rather have Bran back.”

She had said that a lot lately, always like it was a joke, which Sansa knew meant that wasn’t.

“Me too,” Sansa said. “I wonder what he’d be like, now.”

“Older. Braver. Harder. Like the rest of us.” Arya sighed. She did some trick with the dagger that made Sansa smile a little, and Arya noticed. “You liked that? See, look. You could do it. You were always good at embroidery.”

“What does _that_ have to do with embroidery?”

“It’s all complicated finger movements. I never could figure it out. It’s like watching someone play a bloody harp. But I figured it out with daggers. Look.” She moved a bit more slowly, and Sansa could understand it now, the intricate ways her fingers danced over the metal.

“Maybe you’d be good at embroidery now too,” she said. Arya held the dagger out, and Sansa shook her head, smiling.

“Maybe you can teach me how to use one for its intended purpose before I start trying to do tricks with it,” she suggested, and Arya laughed again. It was a clear, youthful sound, and it made Sansa homesick, oddly, even though she was standing literally in the shadow of her family’s castle.

“That’s a good point,” Arya said. “You should learn at least a little, anyway. A good dagger is the best thing to have. This one’s special, Valyrian steel, but you don’t need Valyrian steel to kill most things. I’ll get you something easier.”

“Sure,” Sansa found herself saying. “Will I have to name it?”

“If you like, but you can’t name it something as stupid as Lady,” Arya said. Sansa shoved her, which made Arya shriek with laughter like a child. “You bitch!”

“Arya!” Sansa laughed. So maybe not so like a child anymore.

“You’ve got to name it something good, like…”

“Needle?” Sansa asked wryly.

“Shut up.”

“What’s that one called?” Sansa asked. Arya held the Valyrian steel blade up and smiled at it.

“Little Fire,” she said. She looked suddenly self-conscious. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s a stupid name, but…”

“I like it,” Sansa said quickly. Arya looked up at her. Hopeful and vaguely sad, the way she sometimes looked when she and Sansa spoke. Like every moment she was expecting Sansa to go back to the way she used to be. Sansa smiled wider, trying not to show that it hurt. Trying not to show that she still ached and wished she could fix it. “It’s a good name.”

“Thanks,” Arya said. Begrudgingly, she added, “Lady wasn’t so stupid a name.”

“It was a good name for her,” Sansa said. “She was a little lady.”

“Just like you,” Arya said. There was a wistfulness and a kind of jealousy to it even now.

“And you,” Sansa said. Arya snorted. “What? You’re still a lady. Just because you aren’t exactly like me…”

“Oh, come off it,” Arya said. “Let’s not do this.”

“What? I’m just saying. All the ladies I’ve met. Some of them liked swords and knives. Some of them liked songs and stories. Some of them liked dresses. Some of them were…Cersei.”

“Right,” Arya chuckled.

“You’re a lady who likes swords and protecting the people you love,” Sansa pointed out. “And, and traveling. And home. You’re still a lady. You’re still you. You’re not so different from me. I’m sorry I couldn’t see it before.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” Arya said. “There’s nothing…we aren’t those same people anymore.”

 _There’s nothing to forgive_ , Jon had said. But that hadn’t been true either.

Sometimes it seemed like she had so much she needed to be forgiven for.

“I’ll keep doing it anyway,” she said, and Arya grinned at her. Annoyed, but smiling anyway. It was so Arya. There were parts of her that were _still_ so Arya.

“I’ll find you a dagger,” she said. She was walking away, leaving Sansa in the courtyard. Walking backwards so she could look at her. Smiling still. The Night King felt very far away. Everything felt far away except for Arya, and except for this. It wasn’t Ramsay Bolton’s home anymore. It wasn’t Sansa Bolton’s, either. She was home. She was safe. She smiled.

“Please,” she said. “Thank you, Arya.”

“Thank me when I’ve taught you how to use it,” Arya said.

“How hard could it be?” Sansa teased, and Arya laughed again before she turned and scampered off. She was still Sansa’s little sister. She was still Arya. And Sansa was still Sansa, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Horizons by Xavia


	38. Robb VI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robb encounters both Lannister brothers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's a long one for you today folks! Thanks to everyone who has been reading and commenting. Unfortunately, due to personal and professional time being sucked up by various things, I think this might be the last chapter for the next few days!

Tyrion had certainly seen better days.

Robb was, by contrast, feeling strangely light. It was a day when everything seemed to be going well. A day when he thought that going to Dragonstone might have been the best decision he ever made. There was something about the quality of the air in Highgarden—at least now that the smoke from the battle was gone—that made him feel free of the stresses of Winterfell and Dragonstone both. The wind in his hair. The smell of the flowers. The colors everywhere, in tapestries and rugs and bed coverings. The kindness and the curiosity and the variety of the dragon queen’s people. Everything seemed _good_.

Well, almost everything. He still had yet to speak to Daenerys in any real capacity since the battle. He had gotten the impression that she was avoiding him, or perhaps she had sensed his confusion and decided to wait until he made the choice to approach her. He had thrown himself into useful pursuits. Things that she would inevitably see or at least hear of. Training with her fighters. Planning with her advisors. Discussing strategy over meals instead of staying cloistered away with his own people. Every night he saw those wagons burning. Every day he heard Tyrion apologizing to the Lannister army for the oversight and burning alive the people who could not escape the flames. Every time he had a moment to think, he thought about the way Daenerys had looked at him when he cautioned her against burning her enemies alive.

Robb still wasn’t sure why he had been so vehement, and he wasn’t sure why she had, in the end, agreed to a style of execution that the armies of Westeros would be more comfortable with. There was just something about death by fire…it was fearsome and gruesome, and even when quick it left nothing behind but ash. It dehumanized one’s enemies. If Daenerys wanted to be a beloved queen…

Maybe that was the problem. Maybe Robb had been making too many assumptions about the kind of queen Daenerys wished to be. Maybe she _wanted_ to be feared. There was something to be said about that strategy. People who feared, if they were not pressed too hard, could be easier to control. They would also never truly be her people if she ruled that way.

She didn’t _entirely_ avoid him. She smiled at him and spoke to him courteously if they passed one another. She joined him in the training yard from time to time to watch. She asked politely after whatever letters he had received from his family. But there was a wall between them where there hadn’t been before.

She let it down sometimes, just a bit. Like when they stood together with Missandei and watched Brienne spar with Grey Worm in the garden. The two warriors were fast becoming friends, and Brienne was losing some of that wariness she’d always worn when Robb first knew her. The certainty that every man who spoke to her was also somehow making a joke of her.

She was a vision every time she and Grey Worm fought. Her height and her strength meant she was matched well with Grey Worm, who was smaller and lither and _fast_. Their fights had a pleasing balance to them. Robb had enjoyed the show, standing by with Daenerys and Missandei, feeling proud and glad that Brienne was smiling as she fought. Daenerys had smiled, and she had laughed, and she had cheered on both Brienne and Grey Worm, despite Missandei’s joking protests. But then she would look at Robb, and seem to remember, and the light in her expression would dim slightly. She would hold herself apart again, and he had not yet figured out how to mend what had broken between them.

Brienne, at least, was feeling better. The first few days after the battle had been difficult, but she had not lingered long in her horror. Still too long, for Robb’s tastes; he had done his best to stop Brienne from having to fight the Kingslayer at alll. _Anyone else could do it_ , he had wanted to argue. _It doesn’t have to be you._ But he accepted her presence at his side, and he could only watch when it came time for her to meet the man she cared for in combat. He should have realized that her aim would be to take Lannister in alive, but he _hadn’t._ Not at first. Only when he saw her refusal to strike any blows had he understood. Jaime Lannister meant to die, and Brienne of Tarth would not let him.

Watching a warrior like her fight a man while trying not to kill him…Robb still didn’t know how she had been so restrained. Her every strike had been perfect. He had seen men fight desperate battles before, but they were always trying to _win_. In a way, Brienne was trying to win, too, but her idea of victory was very different from a typical fighter’s. The Kingslayer had attacked her at every turn. Not as skilled as he used to be, maybe, but still more skilled than a common soldier. Holding him off wouldn’t have been _easy_ for Brienne, but it would have been a much simpler thing to simply kill him. Or wound him, even if she wanted him to be alive. Brienne had pleaded with him instead.

The fact that the Kingslayer still lived was a miracle, according to the healers who had tended to him in the immediate aftermath. The first woman who saw to him on the battlefield had shaken her head at Tyrion and Brienne, who were both crouched over him anxiously. She had been replaced with an older woman, who had sighed and hummed and declared it “nearly hopeless”, but then called a litter to take Jaime to a tent that had already been set up for the wounded. Tyrion’s insistence had as much to do with Jaime’s survival as Brienne’s refusal to kill him.

“Try,” Tyrion kept saying, over and over, every time a healer expressed their doubts. “Just _try_.”

So they had, and then Jaime was declared well enough to move to Highgarden, where Tyrion had somehow talked Olenna _and_ Daenerys into giving him a guest room and a private staff of healers. Both women had swallowed back their true feelings, and they had agreed. Daenerys plainly wished to see if Jaime could convince the rest of his men to kneel to her. Olenna, Robb was sure, wanted to see Cersei’s only true ally turned against her.

The Kingslayer meant to die by tricking Brienne into striking him. He meant for Brienne to kill him. Instead, Brienne and Tyrion had both done whatever they could, and Jaime was still alive.

Brienne had drifted in the days immediately following it. Angry, perhaps, or heartbroken. Both at once. She refused to speak to Robb of it, and he knew from his letters with Sansa that Brienne had likewise refused to speak to _her_ about it, too. Brienne was a woman who held her wounds close, and she refused to let anyone try and tend to them. She would rather pretend that those wounds didn’t exist. Her face was blank and difficult to read, but Robb saw the strain around her eyes. He knew what it was like to battle those demons privately. He just didn’t know what sort of demons hers were. Guilt? Fear? Hope?

Tyrion had been the only one to see Jaime in days. Robb knew that, too, because every time he tried to tell Brienne that she could take some time off, she very pointedly refused. Podrick didn’t know any more about it than Robb did, though he shared Robb’s concerns that Brienne was closing herself off too much, and was forcing all her hurts inside, where they would only fester.

Tyrion, walking down the hall toward Robb now, was a man who didn’t let his hurts fester within him. He wore them on his face, plainly and visibly. Robb at first assumed Tyrion was drunk, but as they drew closer to one another, he could tell that the queen’s Hand was simply tired.

“ _There_ you are,” Tyrion said. “Daenerys said I could find you in the library.”

“I’m on my way back,” Robb answered. It sounded false, his politeness. It sounded more like the wariness it probably was beneath the surface. “Why, is there something you need?”

“We haven’t really spoken since you’ve been here,” Tyrion said. “I wanted to tell you that I’m glad to hear that your brother and sister made it back to Winterfell safely.”

Robb smiled, though he meant to keep up a neutral face. Yes, that had been an exciting update to receive. Sansa had apologized for keeping it quiet for as long as she had, but admitted that she didn’t want to tell him anything in letter until she was sure that he trusted Daenerys and her people completely. The letter made Daenerys smile, too, when Robb read it aloud to her, so it was a boon in a few ways. His steps had been lighter ever since, just thinking about Arya and Bran back in Winterfell. They would all be together again soon. All the Starks who remained. He still thought of his mother and his father and baby Rickon at odd moments, still remembered their deaths and their lives and the holes that they would leave in his life forever. But those wounds were more survivable now. Everything else was coming back together, and he could breathe again. His blank moments never lasted very long anymore, and he no longer felt as trapped in his own memories. Perhaps the fighting had done him well, or perhaps it was just the change of scenery. Things had been strained between he and Daenerys since the battle, and he still worried for Brienne, and the pressure of the approach of the army of the dead was still there, but…still. It was something. It made him feel more hopeful for a future where those problems could be fixed.

“Thank you,” he said simply. “You did my brother a service once. He was glad to be able to ride again.”

“Yes,” Tyrion said. “I’m sure he was.” He smiled a little. Neither of them mentioned the dagger that had once been thought to be his, or Catelyn’s hostage-taking that started the war in earnest. It was long past, now.

“Was that all?” Robb asked. Knowing, somehow, that it wasn’t. Tyrion smiled apologetically.

“My brother,” he said. “I assume you’ve heard.”

“That he’s awake and on the mend. Yes. I was glad to hear it.”

“Were you?”

“Not for my own sake,” Robb clarified, and Tyrion laughed slightly.

“No. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. He asks for her.”

Robb sighed. Tyrion plainly knew what he was asking: he looked up at Robb with calm patience.

“I can’t order her to visit him.”

“You _could_.”

“I won’t.”

“I thought that would be your answer, but I had to ask.”

“Is he so annoying about it, then?”

“No, but that’s worse. He’s always _been_ annoying. Even as a child, he never knew when to shut up. He can talk about anything, for any length of time.”

“Yes, I remember,” Robb said with a grimace. Tyrion laughed.

“I can only imagine,” he said, wistful, as if his brother’s confinement in Robb’s camp was a simpler time. Perhaps it was. “He twisted his ankle once as a child and tormented everyone in the household for _days_ from boredom. He isn’t like that this time. He isn’t like himself at all.”

“I would imagine not. He goaded Brienne into striking him down,” Robb pointed out. “He pretended to be going for _me_. Your brother’s too clever a fighter not to know exactly what reaction she would have. He knew how he should have blocked that strike, and it was a choice when he didn’t.”

“Yes,” Tyrion said. “I know. Then do you see why I’m so afraid?”

Robb considered. He imagined Jon in the Kingslayer's place.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Tyrion shook his head.

“I’ve never known him to be like this. I know he wanted to die when he lost his hand. He rather glibly informed me of that, once, and he said that Brienne was the one who was able to get through to him. I was hoping she would be able to do so again. I know she doesn’t owe my brother anything, and is probably quite angry with him, but I’m hoping there’s enough of that famous sympathy for him left in her that she’ll at least agree to speak with him.”

Tyrion didn’t know, Robb realized. Tyrion didn’t know just _how_ _deeply_ Brienne cared for the Kingslayer. How was that possible? He had seen what happened on the battlefield, hadn’t he? The idea that Brienne was avoiding Jaime simply because she was _angry_ was so ludicrous that for a moment Robb almost laughed, assuming it was some jape. Assuming there might be only _sympathy_ within her was…

Robb didn’t know exactly why Brienne avoided the Kingslayer, but knowing Brienne as he did, he assumed it was something far more complicated and far less easy to overcome than mere _anger._

“Have you spoken to her about it?” he asked.

“I’ve tried, but as you can imagine, she has managed to avoid talking to me. It isn’t difficult for her to outpace me. Her legs are much longer than mine.”

Robb smiled slightly. That was easy to imagine. Brienne had become adept at dodging any of Robb’s attempts at discussing Jaime Lannister. It was no wonder that she was evading Tyrion.

“I’ll speak to her,” he said. “That’s all I can promise.”

“Thank you. I don’t know what good it will do, but it’s the only thing he’s asked for.”

“For Brienne to visit?”

“To see if she would,” Tyrion sighed. “He didn’t even sound very _hopeful_. I’m at a loss. It would mean the world if you could ask.”

“Of course.” Robb wasn’t sure if Brienne would visit. He wasn’t sure he should even pass along all of Tyrion’s information. The last thing he wanted to do was pressure Brienne into seeing the man if she didn’t want to, and he didn’t want her to feel guilty for not wanting to. He didn’t understand _why_ Brienne had not gone back to see the Kingslayer now that he was awake, but she made her own choices, and he would support her in them.

He would pass along the message, at least. He would try not to let his own thoughts through at all. Simply tell her that Jaime was asking for her. He thought it might do Brienne some good to talk to Jaime, actually. Robb wasn’t sure _what_ she needed, but clearly she needed something.

Tyrion left him in the hall and headed towards the war room. Robb looked back down the hallway from which he had emerged. Perhaps _he_ needed something, too.

* * *

The Kingslayer didn’t look so much surprised to see Robb as he looked annoyed.

“This has a familiar feel to it,” he said.

He had been fierce and sarcastic and biting when last Robb spoke to him. Chained up, dirty. Menacing still, like he didn’t know how to be anything else. He had snarled at Robb. He had snarled at all of them. He was always trying to escape.

Now, he lay propped up in a big bed. The sheets were white and billowed around him in a way that made him look small in comparison. He was wry, amused. _Exhausted_. He should have looked like a shadow of the man he had been before.

His hair had been cleaned, and his beard had been trimmed, but still he looked every bit as intimidating as he had once. Maybe it was just because of the remembrance of it. The way Robb always had to pretend not to be afraid of him whenever they spoke. He didn’t feel frightened of Jaime Lannister now, but an echo of that fear remained. He would never forget the way the Kingslayer fought in the Whispering Wood. His skill with a blade had been _mesmerizing_.

“Your accommodations are a lot nicer than last time,” Robb pointed out. His mask of bravery was as much a shield as Jaime’s dryness was. He couldn’t blame the Kingslayer for hiding himself away; he didn’t know what to expect of this conversation, either. He forced himself to smile. To act unconcerned. “Though that’s mostly down to the fact that you couldn’t escape if you wanted to.”

Jaime’s jaw twitched slightly as he ground his teeth together, and Robb approached. He stood at the foot of the bed. Perhaps it would have been friendlier to sit beside him in the chair Tyrion had left. He didn’t bother with that. He only stood at the end and watched, and Jaime watched him in return.

“Dare I even ask what you came here for?” Jaime finally asked. Tight with tension. His chest was bare, and he should have looked more vulnerable, but he didn’t. His left fist was clenched on top of the bedsheets. His stump was hidden beneath the blankets. Something about that drew Robb's attention. He felt…he wasn’t sure. Empathy perhaps. Robb still had both his hands, but those difficult months after the Red Wedding had sapped him of his strength and made him feel broken. Shameful. He understood how quickly it became impulse to _hide_ those weaknesses.

“Your brother said you asked for my sister’s sworn sword,” Robb said. He shrugged, making himself more comfortable, folding his arms over his chest. “I wanted to know why.”

“Tyrion spoke to _you_ ,” Jaime said slowly. He seemed almost amused by that. “I don’t know what he thought that would accomplish.”

“He said he couldn’t catch up to Brienne on his own,” Robb answered. Jaime almost laughed. Robb could tell. He pressed his lips together and looked away, but the mirth faded quickly. It reminded Robb of himself. Of the way that emotions once bled out of him quickly, impossible to hold on to. There was a time when he had wished to be dead too, wasn’t there? He remembered it. He remembered the Blackfish telling him to stop being such a whining, ungrateful boy.

_They’re all dead,_ Robb had raged. _Why would I want to live?_

_You’re alive,_ the Blackfish had answered, unsympathetic. _That’s all that matters._ _Shut up about the rest._ _You’re alive, and they aren’t, so_ you’re _the one who has to live with it._

“She won’t see me,” Jaime said. It had the air of a guess, of only half a question.

“Not on her own. She won’t be so quick to forgive.”

This time, Jaime didn’t bother to stifle the laugh. It was dry, drawling. Just like Robb remembered from the war

“You don’t know her as well as you think you do, if you say that,” he said. “It’s one of her more foolish qualities, her capacity for forgiveness. Of me, especially. She isn’t avoiding me because she’s angry with me.”

“How would you know?” Robb asked, defensive even though he knew the Kingslayer was right. “You haven’t seen her.”

Jaime’s look in response was sharp, and brief. He looked away quickly, and he picked at the blanket with his hand. Shrugged like it wasn’t important.

“I saw enough,” he said. “I didn’t say I was _surprised_ she didn’t want to come. But it isn’t anger.”

_No,_ Robb thought. _It isn’t_. Brienne wasn’t afraid of much, but her feelings for Jaime were difficult for her, and they were as difficult for Robb to understand. He could understand why they frightened her. He made some small noise of agreement. He felt sympathy, amusingly. Tyrion thought Brienne's feelings could be summed up with such a bland word as _sympathy_ , but Robb knew better. What _he_ felt was sympathy. Empathy. He knew what it was like to be ashamed of your actions too late to make a difference. It was harder to hate a man when you understood them. Easier to hate when they were all stranger. All monster.

“You could have just yielded,” Robb pointed out. He wasn’t sure why he bothered.

“You could have just married the Frey girl,” Jaime fired back. Robb tilted his head in acknowledgement. Jaime rolled his eyes. “What did _you_ feel when you realize that love had cost you everything?”

Robb couldn’t tell if it was a sincere question or if Lannister was trying to get another rise out of him. It didn’t matter.

“I felt,” he said. “And I feel. That nothing I do can atone for making that choice. For being selfish enough to choose it. I loved Talisa. She was wonderful. Generous. Clever. Smart. She never would have used Wildfire to burn her enemies.”

Jaime’s smile was snide, and he looked like that prisoner in the cage again.

“So you had less to atone for, then. And still you flagellate yourself for it. Well, what else would one expect from a Stark?”

“Mm,” Robb allowed with a reluctant grin. Lannister looked away.

“I don’t _expect_ forgiveness, and I don’t _expect_ I will ever stop atoning for what I have done,” he admitted. “I just want to speak to her.”

Robb looked at Jaime more carefully. The defeated posture. The way he kept avoiding Robb’s eyes.

“Why?” Robb asked.

“Why? What do you mean _why_?”

“Brienne is important to my family. She’s important to _me_. If I’m going to risk distressing her by telling her you’ve asked for her, I’m not going to do it for no reason. I know that she cares for you. I know she believes you honorable, despite every evidence. I know that she respects you, though I hardly understand why. What is it that you want from her?”

Jaime was frankly incredulous, staring at Robb as if he had never met him before. But when he saw that Robb was serious, he nearly laughed. A huffing sound that might have been a tired attempt.

“Oh, I hardly know,” he said, sounding like he was trying to be far more casual than he actually managed. “Brienne and I have been through a lot together. We appreciate each other. It was badly done, making her strike me down. I thought she’d do a better job of it, but I shouldn’t have made that choice. Not that it felt like a choice at the time. I just wanted the battle to end. It should have been you. I _chose_ you. It would have made quite the ending to the story of the evil Lannisters and the innocent Starks. The undead boy-king striking the Kingslayer down. Learning from the mistake he made in leaving me alive last time. But then _she_ was there. And I wanted…well. It doesn’t matter. I want to apologize for my madness. And for every other way I’ve disappointed her.”

There was a confused, almost irritated expression on Jaime’s face. Robb noted it, along with the slump of his shoulders and the wistful way he spoke. It wasn’t as if Robb had a lot of experience in this. His own courtship was short and almost immediately answered. Talisa hadn’t liked him very much at first, but she had always been kind enough about it, and she had fallen for him so quickly, in the end. But Robb had spent enough nights feeling dreadful about it, lying awake and thinking of her contempt when he should have been thinking of battle strategy or something else _useful_. He looked at Lannister now, and he saw the same restless, unsettled energy.

“You love her,” he said. Lannister’s expression was too funny not to laugh at, and so Robb did. The Kingslayer. The former Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. A sister-fucking, oathbreaking monster. And he was in love with the most honorable woman in Westeros. _Him_. Jaime Lannister. And _her_. “That’s absurd,” he said. Jaime’s eyes grew narrow.

“I don’t,” he said, clipped. “And I don’t see what would be so funny about it if I did. Watch yourself.”

“ _Watch myself_?” Robb asked. He didn’t mean to keep laughing at the man, not when he understood just how difficult it was to exist in that fog of loathing Jaime currently occupied, but it was even funnier to think that Lannister could be any threat to him now. Confined to bed as he was. Injured as he was. Then he realized: “you think I’m mocking _her_? You misunderstand me.” Jaime glared even deeper. “Brienne of Tarth is one of the finest woman I’ve ever met. One of the finest people. I’m honored to have her in my guard. It’s _you_ I wonder at. What could appeal to you about that? She’s nothing like your sister.”

Jaime’s glare, truly, was a poisonous thing. Even knowing that there was no way for him to hurt Robb, Robb felt the power of it.

“No,” Jaime agreed. “She’s nothing like my sister.”

It was baldly stated, spoken with a resigned air, and Jaime met Robb’s eyes when he said it. There was something of tense in the set of his shoulders, but he didn’t get defensive or try to argue, and Robb understood more than he had before. Jaime seemed to understand at the same moment. His brow furrowed. He opened his mouth to speak, but didn’t say anything. He looked at Robb as if Robb had said something shocking.

_He wanted Brienne to kill him_ , Robb thought. _Because he didn’t want to go back to his sister. He didn’t want to win. Brienne is nothing like Cersei. She’s nothing like Cersei, and he loves her for it._

“I’ll talk to her,” he said. It plainly bothered Lannister to have to humble himself by nodding in thanks, but he did it anyway. Then he went back to staring down at his hand as it clenched and unclenched on top of the sheets, and Robb left the room without saying anything else.

Tyrion had been right. Jaime didn’t seem very hopeful. He seemed resigned, as Robb had been when he woke in Riverrun and realized that he would not be joining his mother and his wife.

It wasn’t easy to survive something that you wanted to die from. It wasn’t easy to realize that you had failed. It couldn’t have been easy to recognize at last that the person you had followed and believed in wasn’t going to win. It couldn’t have been easy to not _want_ her to win, despite everything. Robb could understand why Jaime was so lost now. Maybe it would have been easier for him to die. Maybe Westeros would have even been a better place if he had. But it wouldn’t have been easier for Brienne to have been the one to kill him, and so Robb would be glad at least that he had survived for _that._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is December by Tow'rs


	39. Jaime V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime and Tyrion have a conversation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh boy here's a 5.6k word chapter of just a single conversation? Clearly I have lost control of this story lmao
> 
> in other news, I have 8 chapters left to edit, and I'm at 295k words in the 2nd draft, so I will definitely be hitting 300k overall! Again: I HAVE LOST CONTROL

He had no excuse, really, for not recognizing the depth of his attachment until Robb Stark spoke the word he hadn’t allowed himself to think in relation to Brienne. No excuse except perhaps for the fact that he had never _loved_ anyone but Cersei. He’d never been forced to recognize another claim on his heart, because there had never _been_ one.

He had known, of course, that he cared for Brienne. He wasn’t quite so broken that he didn’t realize _that_. He understood also that Brienne cared for him. But that was an easy word: _care_. He had cared for lots of people of people in his life, to varying degrees. His children, generally speaking. His brother. Care was easy when it came to his family, and it had become easy when it came to Brienne, as well. He had never had a true friend like her, and it was easy enough to believe that that was what it was.

He cared for Sansa Stark. He had cared for Arthur Dayne. He had cared for Elia and her children, and for Rhaella, and for Rhaegar.

But _love_.

The word had been jarring when Robb Stark spoke it aloud. Jarring because it was spoken so plainly and jarring because it was so true. He had denied it, because what else was he _supposed_ to do? Acknowledge it? Admit it to _Robb Stark_ , of all people? No. But even as he had spoken the denial aloud, the idea that the bratty northern king might be _mocking_ the idea of loving Brienne had nearly driven him out of his bed to choke the boy with his one hand to shut him up. It was that kind of defensive rage that used to lead to him standing guard outside Robert Baratheon's chambers fantasizing about all the ways he could kill _this_ king. He was a man made of jealousy, and a man made of love, and a man made of an overpowering urge to protect that love, even if he didn’t know it enough to name it.

But now he did, and he could name it without confusion: he loved her.

It went beyond care. Likely it had for a while. The more he thought about it…he had loved her when he gave her his sword, hadn’t he? Maybe not like _this_ , maybe not with this fervor, but in his defense, he still thought he loved only his sister when he gifted Oathkeeper to Brienne. Now that his heart had been hollowed, now that he felt he had been scraped raw of the only love he once believed he had been made for, it was easier to see what else he had been carrying inside him all this time.

He had longed to go with her when she left Kings Landing. He must have _known_ , at least somewhere within him, that there was nothing for him in the capital but more misery and more self-hatred. He had watched her ride away from him, and he had wished for a horse and the will to mount it. His feet had carried him for a few steps behind her, as if his body thought she still carried the rope that had once bound him to her. He had given her a sword. He had given her armor. He had jumped into a bear pit to protect her for the simple reason that he could not abide the thought of her being dead. He had thought it guilt, at the time. Maybe it was something more.

Seeing her again at Riverrun…

Yes, it was love at Riverrun. There was no mistaking it now. That _lightness_ within him when he saw her in his tent. A giddy, bubbling, youthful feeling. Relief to see her alive, yes. Pleasure to see a friend among the Freys, certainly. But love, too. It had been love for a while, and perhaps Jaime should be embarrassed that it took Robb Stark of all people to call it what it was and put such an obvious name to it. He wasn’t, though. He was too shocked for embarrassment. Too grateful, humiliating as it was. How long would it have taken him to admit the word on his own? To look at it without flinching? His every instinct would have been to ignore it. Deny it. Draw himself deeper within so that he did not have to examine it.

_I loved her on the battlefield._

He had loved her when she stood before him, their sword in her grasp, raised against him. He had loved her when her sword sliced his cheek, and he had loved her when she looked so hurt to do it. She grieved him before she even ran her sword through him, and she had fought so hard to keep him alive, and he had loved her for that, as well, because no one had ever cared half so much about him. Not Cersei. Not Tyrion. Oh, his siblings loved him well enough, but not like this. Not with no expectations beyond his continued survival. He stood against her. She believed he was trying to kill her king. And yet she still had loved him. She had sobbed for him when she thought him dying, and the sounds pierced his heart sharper than any blade. He loved her for it. He had damned his love for his sister and blamed his love for his sister, but his love for Brienne had saved him. His love and her loyalty and whatever burned inside her that made her forget all else and cry over his body as he faded.

He had never been enough for his siblings. He had always been largely his body to them. Cersei a woman and Tyrion a dwarf, and Jaime was the man they longed to be, and Jaime was the man who helped them stand against the world. He would love them regardless of what they could do for him. He had proven that again and again. Would they love him the same? He thought of Cersei’s disgust when she saw that his sword hand was gone. The best part of him. He’d felt that keenly, and he knew when he saw her sneer that she agreed. But surely, he had thought, she would still want him. If the positions were reversed, wouldn’t he still love her? Wouldn’t he help her? Hold her? Comfort her through her loss?

She hadn’t done any of that. It was Brienne who did those things. Brienne had hated him, and still she had held him close and murmured assurances when he was sick and weak, and still she protected him when Locke and his men tried to have their fun with him when he was too disoriented to fight back. She had been beaten for it. Threatened for it. Sneered at and called horrible things, but it was Brienne, and she didn’t know how to back down when she believed she was doing the right thing.

Was that when it started? He had to wonder. Or did it only start when he returned to Kings Landing and he saw with his own eyes the contrast between Brienne’s gentleness and Cersei’s scorn? Was that the moment his wasted heart realized that it wanted something he had never even known it could have?

He didn’t know. He couldn’t say. It wasn’t any one thing or any one moment. It was just Brienne, all of her. How could he _not_ love her? Brienne knew him for what he was. He had seen her disappointment, her deep unhappiness, her frank yearning for him to be a better man, a man she could be proud to care for. But she would have been satisfied just for him to survive. To live, even if he would still live as an enemy.

_Cersei_ , he thought. _Would rather see me dead than turned against her._

It was an unwelcome realization, but that didn’t make it untrue, did it? He wanted to shove it away out of instinct, but he didn’t. He let it linger.

Things had been different since he woke up. They were different before, on the battlefield, when he first realized that he did not want to return to her, but there was more clarity now. A fog of nothing had settled over him at first. Despair to still be alive. _Exhaustion_ to still be alive after realizing that he was relieved to be dying. But Tyrion was there, telling him to fight, reminding him of Brienne’s sobs on the battlefield, and something had stirred within him.

At first, it only made the guilt worse. She didn’t come to see him, and he was sorry. Sorry and wretched and constantly thinking of Cersei. Prodding at that wound and feeling a void inside himself instead of the desperation to be with her that he once would have said was as much a part of him as his heart or his lungs. Blood and breath and Cersei.

But as the days passed, that despair faded. The guilt faded too, a bit, because he could no longer recognize the man who tried to die on Brienne’s sword within himself. Tyrion still worried, but Jaime was no longer that man. _Madness_ , Tyrion had called it, and maybe he was right. It felt like madness now. Maybe that was fitting. Cersei could not lose her hold on herself without driving him to the same. Following her in all things even as he tried to escape.

He didn’t think the madness was still within him. Days passed, and he grew stronger, and he felt more and more secure within himself. Maybe this last blow to his old self would be what he needed to feel fully whole. He was a man made for love. He had always understood that about himself, and now he felt relief to know that it wasn’t only Cersei’s love he was made for. 

For so long, he had subsisted on so little. Cersei’s words were all of love and care, and those had been easy enough to remind himself of when the gentleness turned to violence, the sweetness into scorn. He had clung to her words greedily, taking them as evidence of her love for so long. Her words and her kisses and her body against his. That was all the proof he had required. But she turned her eyes away from him. She dismissed him. She growled and snapped and snarled at him when he dared to ask for more, and she called him hopelessly stupid, and she always had her eyes on power. He asked her to run away with him, to be with him, to _marry_ him, and every time she laughed or sneered or said _Jaime, be serious._ She would not be some nameless mercenary’s wife, even if the nameless mercenary was _him._

She wanted power, glory, a crown. What was Jaime compared to a _crown_?

_You love her._

Robb’s words had been startled, his eyes wide, his expression incredulous to a degree that made Jaime furious, though _he_ was just as surprised to hear them. _You love her._

_I do, don’t I? I love her._ How had he not noticed? How had no one _told_ him?

Was it so obvious that it only took a few minutes of conversation for the boy to see? Bronn had made some leading comments before, of course, but Bronn was _Bronn_ , and he would make those comments about everyone, and so they never landed the same way Robb’s shocked utterance had. Bronn’s japes left Jaime feeling tense and annoyed every time the mercenary offhandedly said something like, “all you other men are idiots. Talking about your Tarth girl’s size like it’s a drawback. None of you have been with a strong woman, and it shows. The things she could do to me…” before sighing wistfully. Yes, Jaime had tensed and gotten annoyed, and he told Bronn to shut up, and of course that was all because he respected Brienne and wanted Bronn to respect her as well. It had nothing whatsoever to do with jealousy or discomfort or finding himself wondering about it.

And _yes_ , he had _desired_ Brienne. He had desired her when she stood up in the bath. He had desired her when he thought about her in his tent. He had longed for her, wanted her, _liked_ her. He had dreamed of her gentleness, and he had longed for it, and he had longed for her, but...A man could _want_ a woman in that way without being in love with her. Men did it all the time. No, he had never been one of them, but that didn’t mean it was impossible, and Cersei had been so _different_ since he returned without his hand. It made sense in some way that he would look for his fantasies elsewhere. But _love_? How was he supposed to know it was love?

Gods. He really was an idiot, wasn’t he? Cersei was right. Of course it was love. It was a love that did not demand oaths or fealty or _proof_. It asked only goodness of him, rather than talking him into doing things that made him hate himself. How was he supposed to recognize it? He’d never known a love like that before.

What a waste of a life his had been. He’d loved and followed his sister beyond all reason, and it had ruined him for a love that could have been exactly what he had always craved. Brienne was a warrior with a maiden’s heart, and she would have been gentle with him, if they had ever been together. She wouldn’t have mocked him for his wants, and she wouldn’t have turned away from his kisses, and she wouldn’t have catalogued all the best ways to hurt him so that she could use them when he was upsetting her. She wouldn’t ever even _imagine_ doing something like that.

When they were younger, he and Cersei had been something else. Perhaps it had never been healthy—anything that started so young _couldn’t_ be, he didn’t think—but it had been _right_. Better. Closer to perfect. But it had changed so long ago that he couldn’t even remember the last time he felt that _rightness_ he used to. For years he had chased it. He told himself that if he just did this one thing for Cersei... If he just fixed this one problem… If he just held her a little bit tighter, it would fix everything, and they would go back to being what they used to be. It never worked, because that wasn’t what Cersei wanted. Cersei wanted _him_ , and she already had him, and that was the end of it. He was led along on a string, constantly hoping, constantly wanting, and Cersei was never satisfied with him. She was always looking for something, too. Something he could never seem to give her.

Why had it taken _this_ to make him see it?

He’d been a soldier most of his life. He knew that it wasn’t unusual for a man to find himself changed by coming so close to death in a battle. Men would wake after devastating wounds and announce that they were going to find the woman they thought they had lost. They were going to return home and help their parents with the farm. They were going to be nicer to their brothers, their sisters. Resolutions were always made by dying men who found that they regretted more than they had expected to, and suddenly found themselves without the time to fix it. He never thought he would be one of them. He knew his regrets. Thought he knew his regrets, anyway. And he knew they were not the kind that were particularly easy to fix. But here he was, awake and regretting. Just like any other man.

He should have gone with Brienne when she was leaving Kings Landing. He said it when he thought he was dying, because it was true. He should have gone with her to find Sansa Stark. Or he should have gone with her when they saw each other in Riverrun. It should never have come to this. He should never have made her do this.

Tyrion visited often, and there were plenty of handmaids and stewards who popped in and out to make sure he was still resting and didn’t need anything, but otherwise his days were filled with boredom. He found himself sleeping more than he had in years. What else was there to do? His wound was healing slowly, and his body seemed to need it. He was always tired. His mind was foggy, distant. He had wanted to die, and he hadn’t been allowed. Not yet, anyway. But he didn’t know what he was supposed to be doing instead.

* * *

Tyrion came to see him that night, as he always did. Now that Jaime was more himself, he could see how Tyrion worried for him. He hadn’t given it much attention in the hazy first days after he woke in pain to find that he was not dead but merely close to it. Tyrion smelled of wine, as he often did, and that was another thing to feel guilty about. He hadn’t done enough for Tyrion. Not ever, maybe, but certainly not lately.

“A letter arrived for you,” Tyrion said. He fished it out of his pocket and handed it over with a raised eyebrow. It was a small scroll, stamped with the Winterfell seal. Jaime couldn’t help but smile as he took it. “A smile. That’s new.”

“It’s from Sansa Stark,” Jaime said, primarily because he knew it would shock his brother. Tyrion’s eyebrows flew higher, and he was quietly satisfied with that. “I imagine she’s displeased I didn’t respond to her first letter. Or perhaps she’s displeased because I compelled her sworn sword to try and kill me. I’ll have to read it and find out.”

He struggled to open it with one hand. Bad enough normally, but his left was weak with exhaustion, and it was difficult to get leverage when you were on bedrest. Tyrion said nothing, just took the scroll back gently and opened it. And then immediately began reading. Because he was Tyrion.

“ _Apparently my first letter wasn’t firm enough, and you thought you could safely ignore it. I mean to be more plain this time: I expect a response_.” Tyrion snorted, but it quickly grew into a quiet panic when Jaime tried to sit up to snatch the letter away. He shoved the scroll back into Jaime’s hand. His expression smoothed back over into unconcern, but his mouth had a slight tremor to it. Disapproving and nervous. Jaime felt sorry again. He would lie quietly and behave himself to make Tyrion feel better, but he felt oddly exposed, hearing Sansa's words from Tyrion’s mocking mouth.

“We’ve been writing,” he said, defensive.

“You’ve been writing to my wife.”

“The young woman father forced you to marry, yes.”

“You know I didn’t mean it in any other way.”

“I hope not. I don’t think she _or_ her brothers would take very kindly to your reminders. Or her sister, for that matter. Sansa says Arya’s learned quite a few skills since she’s been away.”

“ _Sansa says_ ,” Tyrion repeated. His eyebrows could not have climbed any higher without physically detaching from his face.

“Are _you_ going to give me a lecture on propriety?” Jaime asked.

“No, hardly. I’m just…what possessed you to start up a correspondence with _her_ , of all people? Was it Cersei’s idea?”

“No. Gods. Cersei didn’t know. I kept _this_ from her, at least.”

Jaime looked down at the letter. It was a rather long one, and Sansa had such small, cramped writing. It would take him a while to work it out. All for the privilege of being berated by a woman young enough to be his daughter. Still, he smiled. Tyrion sighed explosively.

“Jaime,” he said. “You realize I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s wrong with you.”

“What?” Jaime asked. He was amused, though he could hardly figure out why. Tyrion looked so sad and so earnest, and it really wasn’t funny. He still felt guilty and angry and self-loathing, but Tyrion was just so… _sincere._ It was unseemly. Their father would have hated it. Maybe that was why it was funny. “Help me?”

“You tried to end your own life.”

“I fought in a battle.”

“For the side you knew would lose. And you refused to yield even when you knew it was impossible for you to win. You tricked your only friend in the world into striking you down. Jaime. Look at me.”

Jaime did, annoyed by his little brother’s tone. Annoyed by the fact that he was being made to feel guilty for something that should have been his own choice. To die with a sword in his hand. A good death. A clean death.

_A death in the arms of the woman you love. A death by her hand._

Yes, he already felt enough guilt for that, though he still didn’t think it was such a bad thing, in the end, to want to die.

Tyrion was so earnest, looking at him. Jaime could only hold his gaze for a few moments before he had to turn away.

“I didn’t know what to do,” he admitted.

“ _Anything_ else,” Tyrion fired back. He seemed grateful for this. For a conversation. It made Jaime feel guilty again. When would it stop? The guilt. Would it ever?

“I failed her, Tyrion,” Jaime said. Before his brother could retort with something no doubt very clever, he said, “I _wanted_ to fail her. I wanted Brienne to win, but more than that, I wanted myself to lose. I knew…”

“You do not owe our sister even half of what you’ve given her,” Tyrion interrupted.

“It isn’t about owing.”

“It isn’t about love, either. No matter what you think.”

“It was,” Jaime argued.

Tyrion was frozen. Staring at Jaime. He looked him over carefully, as if he would see some evidence of whether Jaime’s words were true.

“ _Was_ ,” he repeated.

“I’ll always love her,” Jaime deflected. “I don’t think you can unlearn something like that. But…Tyrion, it isn’t what it was. It can’t be. Not after everything. She isn’t...or maybe it’s me who isn’t the same. Maybe I’ve finally changed. It took me longer than I would have liked.”

“Forgive me for being skeptical,” Tyrion finally said, and Jaime laughed. It hurt his chest to laugh. Like his heart was pushing at his throat, trying to get larger again after a lifetime of shrinking into the tiny spot that it had been afforded.

“I don’t blame you for being skeptical,” he said. “I’d think you were a fool if you believed me. It isn’t just about that, anyway. It’s about doing what’s right. Cersei’s choices…she doesn’t want to listen. She doesn’t want to hear me. She isn’t acting rationally.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Tyrion said. “When I heard about Tommen…”

“I know,” Jaime said.

“There’s nothing left for her to lose but you, and…”

“I wouldn’t be enough for her to bargain for. You can say it.”

“You know I hate to.”

“No you don’t. You delight in it.”

Tyrion’s only acknowledgement was a slight tilt of the head. Jaime tried not to feel bitter about being right. He was lucky Tyrion gave him as much leeway as he did about Cersei. Lucky and _humiliated_.

“Our sister will do anything to hold on to her power,” Tyrion mused. “When her children were alive, I would have been able to say _but_ _she will never endanger her children_ , and perhaps that would have even been true. But now? If she’s truly losing her grip…”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to. It’s written on your face. It’s in your every action. And I’ve spoken to some of our soldiers. They’re all saying it. They told me they wanted you to take the throne.”

“I’ve heard their thoughts. They’re not as clever as they think. Half of them only want me on the throne because I’ve got a cock. The other half probably just think I can’t be any worse.”

“Tell me truthfully, Jaime. How bad is it?”

“Are you asking as my brother? Or are you asking as the Hand to the Targaryen queen?”

“That’s an unfair question.”

“Is it?”

“You told me you wanted to lose. Do you still mean to stay loyal to Cersei?”

“Loyalty has nothing to do with it.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“I could not support Cersei’s choices. I still can’t. That doesn’t mean I’m ready to swear to the daughter of the man I killed. Not that I’m expecting her to _want_ my sword. I have to assume a trial is coming.”

“You know I wouldn’t allow her to.”

“ _Allow_ her? In my experience, the Hand can do very little when the ruler is set on something. And the most unfortunate of them lose their heads for trying. I won’t let you die trying to save my life.”

“Daenerys isn’t her father.”

“No, she isn’t. Her father never had dragons. Just wildfire.”

“Cersei’s the one with the wildfire now, Jaime.”

“You don’t need to remind me.”

“Apparently I do. She used it to blow up the sept. A _sept_ , Jaime.”

“I’m aware.”

“And yet you stayed.”

“Yes. I did. I stayed. What else was I to do?”

“I don’t know. _Anything_?”

Tyrion was angry now, and Jaime felt his own anger bleeding away. He was relieved.

“Now you see,” he said.

“See _what_?”

“Why I wanted Brienne to kill me.”

“Jaime.” Alarmed, now, his anger fading. Tyrion looked older when he sighed. His shoulders sagged, like he had stopped trying to hide his exhaustion.

“I made my choices.”

“Yes. I know.”

“I followed her. I stayed with her.”

“Yes. You did.”

“I could have stopped her. I could have put a sword through her back same as I did to Aerys. I could have turned her army against her. I could have turned to Riverrun and taken it back from the Freys and given it back to the Tullys where it belongs. I could have marched north and pledged our soldiers to the Starks, and some of our men would have followed me. I could have gone back to Casterly Rock and taken it for myself. I could have raised our banners against her. I could have confirmed for everyone that those children were mine and that Cersei’s claim to the throne was meaningless. I could have done _anything_.”

“Jaime,” Tyrion was saying. “Jaime, please.”

“I did _nothing_. I did nothing to stop her. I let her touch me. I let her fuck me. I didn’t even _want_ to anymore, but I let her do all of it, because why wouldn’t I? What else was there for me? What else could I do but _anything_? Hundreds of my men died in that battle because I was too weak to stop following her. I should have been one of them.”

Tyrion sagged further. He was shaking his head. His lips were pale as they pressed together. He looked as if he wanted to be angry. He looked as if he was too afraid to be angry.

“Jaime,” he said again. Jaime’s chest was heaving. He felt lightheaded, too, like he was in the middle of a panic. He didn’t _feel_ like he was. Everything felt very clear. He should be dead. He should have died.

“I just wish it hadn’t been her,” he said.

“Daenerys?”

“Brienne.”

“I’ve been trying to get her to come see you.”

“I know. You should stop. She’s made her position on that clear, and she’s right. She should stay far away from me.”

“Yes, I think she should. I like my brother with fewer holes in him. Even if it _was_ an accident.”

“It wasn’t an accident.”

Tyrion glared, said, “on _her_ part, you fucking idiot,” and put his head in his hands. Jaime knew he should be sorry. He couldn’t quite muster it. He was away again, in the place he liked to be. On a bridge over a stream. Fighting with Brienne. But it wasn’t fighting anymore. It was laughter, sparring. Their swords came together. He had two hands, and she was flushed. She bit her bottom lip. She smiled at him.

“I wanted it to be her. That’s the only thing I regret. I should have realized…well. I think I did realize how it would kill her to do it. I just didn’t care. I just wanted it to be her. I didn’t want it to be dragon fire or a beheading. I wanted _her_ sword.”

“The sword that father gave you,” Tyrion said, like that was the important part. Sometimes Jaime remembered that Tyrion’s ideas weren’t _always_ clever ones.

“It wouldn’t matter. As long as it was hers.”

Jaime looked at Tyrion, and Tyrion was looking back at him. Oddly, frowning, his brow furrowed.

“I suppose it’s obvious to you too,” Jaime said.

“ _What’s_ obvious?” Tyrion asked.

“I’m in love with her, apparently.”

Tyrion only stared for a moment. Then he laughed, but it was uncertain, and it faded quickly.

“You’re serious.”

“Stark saw it.”

“Sansa? Or Robb?”

“I suppose Sansa’s probably known it for a while, but I meant Robb. I knew I cared for her. I knew I cared for her more than I should. I knew I _wanted_ her, I suppose. But Robb…he just _said_ it. Like it was obvious. And it was. Did you know?”

“No.” Jaime found he was disappointed with Tyrion, though he didn’t think he should be. “I don’t think I ever would have noticed. I never thought it would be anyone but Cersei for you.”

“Neither did I.”

“Brienne of Tarth. Of all people, _her_.”

“Please don’t, Tyrion. I’ll have to get out of this bed to punch you, and you know the maester will be angry with me if I do.”

“I don’t mean anything by it. Only…Cersei is…Cersei. And Brienne…”

“I know very well what both of them are. More than most, I expect. Cersei’s beauty is Cersei’s beauty, and Brienne’s is her own.”

“Brienne the Beauty,” Tyrion mused. “I heard someone call her that, once, in Kings Landing. I told him to lower his voice so you wouldn’t hear him. Maybe I _did_ know, in a way. I thought you had a fondness for her that was rather like a favorite pet. I don’t think I ever would have considered love.”

“She isn’t my pet. If anything, I’m hers: the idiot creature she tolerates despite the fact that I keep shitting on the carpet.”

“Seems to me the easy solution is to stop shitting on the carpet.”

“I’m not looking for a solution. I know what I’ve done.”

“I’ll try and stop her again.”

“Don’t. Stark said he’d talk to her, and I’ll…if she doesn’t want to see me, I’ll leave her be. After what I did…I know she cared for me, for all I’m too much of a fool to deserve it. I might have ruined it. I was selfish.”

“There’s a change.”

“Shut up.”

“You sound more like yourself. I’ll keep tormenting you if it means you stop acting like you have been.”

“How have I been acting?”

“Empty.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No you aren’t.”

“I am. I know I’m dreadful. I know I’m hard to love.”

“You aren’t. That’s the problem.”

“It would be easier if you didn’t.”

“Well. _That’s_ true, at least. But I’d rather have you. You’re my brother. I love you. I need you to stay alive. Being Hand is a lot of work, and these Unsullied don’t like my jokes. No one laughs at me. It’s really awful. I need you to take pity on me.”

He was smiling, but Jaime could see the strain. He wanted assurances that Jaime wasn’t sure he could give. Still, Jaime smiled back.

“I suppose I could pretend to find you funny for a little bit,” he said. “As long as I’m allowed to stay.”

“She isn’t her father, Jaime.”

“I killed her father.”

“Yes. And she knows what her father was.”

“Does she?”

“Jaime…”

“Will she be a good queen? At least tell me that. Will she be a better queen than Cersei?”

Tyrion had the good grace to think it over.

“She’s young,” he finally said. “And she hasn’t had much luck in the art of _ruling_ , but she has been in some very difficult places. She has a good heart. She has good intentions. Sometimes that’s enough.”

“Quite the endorsement.”

“I could give you the full pitch. You asked for honesty. I think she can do it.”

Jaime nodded. He wasn’t sure what to believe, but Tyrion at least seemed sincere.

“Just…if she orders it…”

“She won’t.”

“Just promise me it won’t be fire.”

“Jaime.”

“I don’t think I want to die by fire. I’ve seen men go that way before. It didn’t seem particularly pleasant. And I’ve put you and Brienne through enough. Tell your queen that she’ll have at least two fewer supporters if she does it.”

“Jaime, I promise.” Tyrion was looking at him very intently, and Jaime felt some of his panic starting to fade. He nodded.

“Thank you,” he said. “And if you see Brienne, at least tell her I’m sorry. Even if she won’t come to see me. Don’t mention that at all, actually. Just tell her I’m sorry.”

Tyrion nodded, and Jaime ignored his little brother’s sad, knowing smile. He held tighter to the scroll from Sansa Stark. She, at least, hadn’t forsaken him. Her letter would be chastising as usual, but he knew now that she wouldn’t stop writing to him. If the revelation about Bran hadn’t done it, nothing would. She was too much like him. She clung to the people that she had. She didn’t know how to walk away from them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the songs for this chapter are Little Lion Man by Mumford and Sons and Like Gold by Vance Joy


	40. Daenerys V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daenerys endures a second prodding about a possible marriage alliance, and she finally gets a chance to speak with Robb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm having QUITE a week already and it's only Monday so I can only say thank you to everyone who has been reading and commenting, and I appreciate you very much.

It seemed an innocent question when Missandei posed it, but Dany was suspicious anyway. She met her friend’s eyes in the mirror as Missandei finished adjusting Dany’s windblown braid.

“Did Varys put you up to this?” she asked. Missandei seemed surprised by the question, and perhaps a little offended. Dany was sorry for it.

“No, of course not,” Missandei said. “I was just wondering.”

_Have you introduced Robb Stark to your dragons yet?_

The knowing lilt to that question…

Missandei was obviously just making conversation. But ever since Varys had brought up the possibility that an alliance could be made through a marriage to Robb Stark, Dany had been on edge, scrutinizing their every interaction. Going over all the reasons why it made a good match and all the reasons why she didn’t want to.

Besides, it was _Varys_. It was better to assume that everything was part of his plan. It was harder to get swept away by it that way.

“It’s just,” Missandei continued. “He is a kind man. He’s good with people. He is…he _would_ be a good leader. Men listen to him. Women are fond of him. You said you would need to choose a husband from a great house when you came to Westeros, and you could choose _much_ worse.”

“Yes, you’re right,” Daenerys admitted. She could hardly be angry with Missandei for pointing out the obvious, and besides, her first thought upon noticing that her braid was out of place was that she was meeting with Robb soon and should be presentable. She was no longer the young girl she had been when she was wed to Khal Drago, but in some ways she still had a girlish heart, and she simply _liked_ spending time with him. She had been afraid at first that he was another politician, like all the other men who tried to win her heart for the power and politics of their nations. The promise of three dragons and all her armies was too tempting to resist for most men, and they were so obvious about their greed and their lust and their lack of care about Daenerys Targaryen herself.

But Robb had been open with her. If he wanted her dragons, he’d done quite a good job pretending not to. He had met Drogon once, and he had been so nervous that she had laughed at him. That had been before the battle, when things were easier between them. They had seemed unbalanced since, and she had no idea how to fix it. He had been kind enough to her the previous day, when Olenna organized a small feast to celebrate their victory. He had even danced with her, but he had danced with many people, and there was nothing in his attentions to _her_ that seemed particularly pointed.

She hadn’t known any of the Westerosi dances. She’d never had much occasion to learn, growing up, but Olenna had insisted on a proper feast, and Tyrion had insisted that she join the merriment, because it would make their allies see her as more than just the fearsome queen who rode into battle on a dragon. So she _had,_ dancing with Robb and Varys and Tyrion and a string of others that Tyrion had deemed safe. When she mentioned to Robb that she had never danced before, he showed her the steps. Smiling, not laughing at her. Laughing along when she finally laughed at herself. She had been aware of everyone’s eyes on them. Of course everyone’s eyes were on them. What a _pair_ they made. What a powerful alliance they would be.

They _did_ make a fine pair. And she had enjoyed his company. Perhaps that wasn’t as important as what power he could add to hers, but…it _felt_ important, all the same. And Robb had been so much more standoffish since the battle. The dance had been a rare moment of lightness between them. Ever since he had stood between Drogon and Brienne, and ever since he had cautioned her to show mercy, something had been different.

Even before the battle, she had often wondered what he truly thought of her. She didn’t trust very easily, after having been burned so many times, and Robb Stark was always faultlessly polite. It made him impossible to get a read on. She was used to being the inscrutable one, because she hid her feelings behind a mask that never cracked or wore away. Robb’s mask was prettier: he cloaked himself in courtesies and pretended not to be a wolf at heart.

She remembered, sometimes, that he had _also_ been thrust into a position of leadership when he was very young. Like her, he’d had to learn courtesy and politics as a survival mechanism. He had been fighting for his family, for the people he loved. His northerners had looked to him, and he had failed them, but still they had chosen him a second time, when he hadn’t even wanted the responsibility. It made her wonder why _she_ was fighting so hard for this cold land and its cold people. It made her jealous for the childhood he’d had and for the people he loved who had trusted him enough to rely on him.

Now, even her own people seemed disposed towards him. Missandei was right, and Varys had been right when he reminded her, too: she had given up Daario for a _reason_. She knew she would need a husband that Westeros would approve of. Robb was young, unmarried, and he claimed kingship of a considerable portion of her land. If she married him, she wouldn’t have to force him to give it up, and she had found more and more as their days passed together that she didn’t _want_ to force him to give her anything that he would not give willingly. Marrying Robb Stark would solve an awful lot of her problems, all at once. But it wouldn’t solve the problem of finding out how he _felt_.

She was a queen. She was a Khaleesi. She had known that she would not marry for love. She had loved before, and she did not need to again. It would be enough to have an intelligent, kind husband who would treat her well and not try to steal her throne. Was Robb Stark that man? He seemed to be, but she would not be so foolish as to trust without certainty. Was he relying on his charm and his fair looks to grant him her heart? Was he waiting to seize power from her?

She missed Daario sometimes. The warmth of his body and the openness of his smiles.

_Robb Stark’s smiles are open, too. He never hides anything away from you._

But that was the thought of a foolish girl, and she would not allow it.

Missandei finally finished fixing her hair, and Dany thanked her absently as she strode out onto her balcony. Rhaegal and Drogon were playing in the flowery field beyond Highgarden, nipping at each other. They seemed more settled here than they had in Meereen, but still she worried. Westeros had forgotten the power of dragons just as much as the rest of the world had. They weren’t prepared for her children. It was good for the people to fear them, but they couldn’t be _too_ afraid. She needed them to accept her.

Time passed as she watched her children, though she scarcely noticed. She was always at peace when she watched them at play. They reminded her of where she had come from, and they gave her the strength she needed to get where she needed to go.

When Missandei appeared by her elbow, she had an apologetic smile on her face, and Dany knew she was needed.

“What is it?” she asked with a smile to match her friend’s.

“Robb Stark is here for your meeting, your grace. He has requested a private audience.”

Missandei’s tone told Dany exactly how little she liked that request, but Dany found herself disposed to grant it. Things between she and the king of the north had been rocky enough lately that she was eager to give him this. Open the trust between them again, somehow. Fix what had been broken by the sight of her dragons in battle.

There had been days since that she had felt defensive about her children. How dare he judge them? How dare he fear her? But there were more days when she understood. Tyrion had warned her about the flames. About her father, and about her house, and about the things that the people of Westeros would find dishonorable and what they would find acceptable. She had hoped that he was wrong, but now she saw that he was not. There was a real fear in these people, and it made _I am not my father_ a more important statement than anything else she said.

_My dragons will not please everyone_ , she thought. _I will not please everyone._

But Robb Stark…

He had been frightened of her, on the battlefield. He had looked at her with respect. He had spoken to her with deference. That was worse than anything else, because she knew it for the fear it was, and she had wished that she could drive it away.

_Not you_ , she had wanted to say. _You’re supposed to understand me._

“Let him in,” she said. “Please wait outside with Grey Worm and Lady Brienne.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?” Missandei asked.

“Yes,” Dany replied. “I am.”

And she was. She may have been wary when it came to figuring out what the king in the north _wanted_ , but she trusted him. He might want to talk to her about her actions on the battlefield, when she allowed Drogon to burn that caravan and kill those soldiers and camp followers. He might want to talk about her hesitation after the battle when it came time to decide what should happen to the soldiers they took. Those would all be fair conversations, and she was almost grateful that he wanted to have them alone, because she would not feel the need to save face in front of her advisors if she found herself agreeing with him.

If there was one thing she was certain of about Robb Stark, it was her safety when she was with him. The way he spoke of his sisters, the way he spoke of his father. Noble, honorable. It was the opposite of what Dany had learned of Ned Stark as she grew up and heard stories from her brother and from Jorah, but she knew better now how a person’s experience could color their perception, and she believed that Ned Stark was probably somewhere in between. He had risked his marriage to protect her nephew. He had raised Jon Snow as his son despite it being a stain on his reputation, and she thought that spoke well of him. Robb’s admiration of his father's honor spoke well of Robb, too.

* * *

She was still standing by the balcony when Robb entered. Missandei cast her one more worried look before the door finally shut, and then they were alone. Dany’s dress blew around her legs in the gentle breeze, and she observed the way that he looked at her. His eyes traveled over her more slowly than they used to. She was sure of it. He allowed his eyes to catch on her dress and her neatened braid and the slight flush in her cheeks. He was smiling softly.

_He doesn’t hate me,_ she realized. _He isn’t afraid of me._ It was a relief. It was stunning how much a relief it was. 

“You wanted to see me?” she asked. He seemed to remember that he was in her rooms for a purpose, and he fumbled with a letter that he drew out from behind his back, where he had clasped his hands around it.

“From my sister,” he said. “Sansa. It’s rather long. I read it several times before I decided to come to you with it. I know you have been occupied with the surrender of the Lannister army and all that that entails.”

She wondered if that was a veiled insult, but she decided that it wasn’t. She had little enough to do with the army. That had all been handled by Grey Worm and his captains. Tyrion, too, had helped convince a number of his family’s soldiers that Dany would make a better queen than Cersei. Dany was under no illusions: when it came to soldiers, particularly soldiers in this foreign land, she was better as a figurehead with dragons. But Robb didn’t seem to know that. He was earnest when he looked at her. Earnest and concerned.

“Of course,” she said. “Whatever you need. You and Lady Brienne performed a great service for me.”

At the mention of Brienne’s defeat of the Lannister commander, Robb frowned.

“Yes,” he said. “Of course.”

Dany wondered if he would welcome gossip about Lady Brienne and the Kingslayer. She doubted it, but she found herself speaking anyway. Why? She couldn’t understand it. Was she _nervous_?

“I spoke with Lady Brienne already,” she said. “About her role. I understand that it cost her a lot to do it.”

Robb seemed surprised by her words. Perhaps by her sympathy; she hoped that wasn’t it.

“I’m sure she appreciated your kind words,” he said at last. “It has been a trying time for Lady Brienne, but she’s the strongest person I’ve ever met. I know she’ll recover.”

Dany nodded eagerly. She felt a fool, looking for his approval. She was Daenerys Targaryen, not a child any longer. She didn’t need for anyone to approve of her.

_You need the north. You need his alliance. You need the people of Westeros to respect you, and an alliance with Robb Stark is how you’ll get it._

_Is that_ all _you need?_

_Yes. That’s all you need. But is it all you_ want _?_

Daario had been a _want_. She had wanted him, and she had cared for him, and he had fascinated her. She had trusted him, as far as one could trust a man like him. But there had been something missing between them. Was it in she and Robb? She couldn’t yet tell. She hoped it was.

Where had that come from? That hope? What foolish impulse had created it? She thought she might hate it, but she wasn’t sure. She wanted...

She _wanted_. She wanted something good for herself. Something that her ambitions and her goals could not touch. Daario had been shoved aside, and she wished that there had been another way, but what she wanted and what she needed hadn’t lined up. Would they line up now? Robb was not Daario. Perhaps that was even a good thing. Daario encouraged the worst parts of her. Robb had seen her burn those men, and he had looked…

Afraid. Concerned.

She didn’t need another man who told her only that she was good, or that she was powerful, or that she was right, no matter what she chose. She needed people who would _help_ her. Encourage kindness and fairness and justice. People like Barristan Selmy. People like Jorah Mormont.

People like Robb Stark.

He unfolded the letter and held it out for her to take, and the trust of the act struck her. He was giving her his sister’s letter. The other letters had been summarized. Spoken of. She had known, of course, that she could likely learn of their full contents from Varys, but she hadn’t felt the need. She wanted only as much as he would give her, and she was glad of that deliberation now, because the moment he chose to share the letter with her felt…

It felt important. He handed it over like it wasn’t. That felt important, too.

“What does it say?” she asked him.

_I trust you, too._

“My sister…I think I mentioned to you before that my siblings might have played these kinds of pranks when we were children. Writing to me of impossible things in the hopes that I would make a fool of myself. That was my first thought when I read this. But they aren’t those people anymore. They wouldn’t do that. They know how important all this is. But Sansa…she writes that Bran, my brother, has come back to them _different_. He isn’t the same person he was. Our sister, Arya, she’s different too, apparently, but in a way that’s less…gods.” He laughed a little, ducking his head, and Dany could see the exhaustion in him. What would it be like? To be close enough to him. To reach out and touch him. Soothe his aches and tiredness? She remembered touching Drogo after his battles. Kissing him and running her hands down his muscles. Soothing him. He had closed his eyes to her. Trusted her. Her fingertips ached with a need to brush her thumb across those dark circles under Robb’s eyes. To cup his jaw.

_What is wrong with you?_

“Take your time,” she said with a smile.

“I know how it sounds,” he said. “I’m trying to make it sound less absurd.”

“Make it as absurd as it needs to be. I hatched dragons from stone on my husband’s funeral pyre. I sat among them and did not burn.” She smiled at his own growing grin. “I can handle a little absurdity.”

Robb’s eyes crinkled a bit at the corners when he smiled, which she liked. His eyes were kind. Warm as they looked at her. Grateful, too. She had set him at ease.

“Bran went beyond the wall,” he said carefully. “And he says that he has become something called the Three Eyed Raven. Sansa isn’t clear what that is. I don’t think _she_ understands it. But whatever he is, he’s managed to give them more information about the Night King.”

“The one with the undead army,” Dany said seriously. Robb understood that she was teasing him a bit, and his grin grew wider.

“Your grace, please don’t take back your promise to try and understand the absurdity. There’s so much more of it in this letter.”

She laughed, surprised with herself.

“No,” she said. “I’m sorry. Tell me more about the raven with three eyes who has been warning about the king of the dead.”

“I warned you,” Robb said. He was looking at her like…She didn’t know. Like a friend. It felt better than she had expected.

“Are you _sure_ it isn’t a jape?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” Robb said. He laughed again, a little helplessly. “I almost wish I could say it was. Or that I thought it was. It would make things easier, but it would also be…I would like to think that they would try something like that again. They’re both so serious now. Well, Jon was always serious.”

“It couldn’t have been easy. Growing up the way he did.”

“No,” Robb admitted. He was looking at her again like she had said something he wanted to hear, and she remembered that she actually _could_ do this. She may not have been as practiced a politician as Tyrion would like, and Meereen had been _such_ a disaster, but she understood how to talk to people. Especially people like Robb Stark, with whom she already had something of a connection. Enough commonalities to make conversation between them simple. “It wasn’t always easy. My mother wasn’t kind to him. She was afraid of him. Of the effect he would have on my claim. Her disdain turned Sansa against him too. Time has changed some things. Neither of them are quite the people they were, and they’re much closer than they used to be, but… I’m sorry.” He ducked his head with a grimace. It might have seemed like a performance on any other man, but Dany had seen enough of men and their performances to disarm her, and she knew that this wasn’t it. “I’m sorry. This isn’t important.”

“It is to me,” Dany said. Too quickly. Robb looked startled. She smiled, and it was her turn to be self-effacing. It _was_ a performance, mostly, from her. Mostly. Less than she wished. “I’ve never had a family. Not like yours. Hearing you talk about it…seeing the way they make you smile…”

Robb’s smile deepened, right on cue. Just as she had meant for it to.

“I wonder sometimes,” he said. “About how you must have lived as a child. If things were different, you could have had siblings. Nieces and nephews, too. You could have had a family. I am sorry you never did.”

She didn’t mention that his father was part of the rebellion that tore her family from her. That had been well established, and their fathers’ choices had nothing to do with this place between them now. It had been left behind them long ago.

“I am as well,” she said graciously. “But I _have_ a family now. My people are my family.”

She thought that Robb wanted to argue with that, from the way he frowned. But he didn’t. He merely looked at her. He had expressive eyes. Blue, light and amused. He said once, offhandedly, that they were the Tully look. Something his mother had given him. She liked them. She liked a lot of things about him. Damn Varys.

“The truth is that I need your help,” he said. He looked at her with those eyes she liked so much, from behind the curly reddish-brown hair she liked as well. He kept talking about wanting to cut it shorter again. The first time he mentioned it, she nearly told him to leave it, before she stopped herself, refusing to mention that she liked it long on him. She liked how soft it looked. She liked the soft way he was looking at her now, with all that intensity directed her way.

“I need your help,” he had said. She was weak for those words. She was weak for those words from _him_ especially. From a person she cared for. Was this too much? Was this too fast? Did he _know_ her weaknesses? Was he playing on them? Had _his_ advisors been at him about marriage and about making her fall for him? She could not tell. It made her uncomfortable to wonder. It made her _worry_ to wonder.

“With what?” she asked.

“Jon and Bran both need to speak with you,” he said. “Because I can think of no other way to prove to you that what I tell you is true.”

“Have I given you any indication that I don’t believe you?”

“No. But what I would be asking…” He hesitated, and she saw some of the fear that she had dreaded to see. Yes, he still had some fear of her. He hid it well, but it was there, and it made her stomach clench with disappointment. Disappointment in what? In him? In herself? She could hardly tell. She only knew that she didn’t like it.

“What are you asking, Robb?” she asked. He seemed surprised, perhaps by her direct address of him. But she would not be played or made a fool. If he wanted something from her, he would have to ask directly.

“Cersei,” he said slowly. “Will keep. She has locked herself in her castle. She has barricaded herself behind the city’s walls. She will happily stay there until you are prepared to face her. With all the allies you need.” He had an apologetic lilt to his tone, and Dany knew what that meant. He was bargaining. He could not threaten to take back what had not officially been promised, but he could threaten not to give it to her. “The Night King. The army of the dead. Those _won’t_ wait. By the time you take Kings Landing, they’ll have wiped out the north, and they will continue to you. Perhaps you’ll be lucky, and you can take the city with minimal losses. But perhaps not. Either way, the army of the dead will wipe out the rest unless we stop it.”

“The help you mean to ask is for me to abandon my throne to a madwoman,” Dany pointed out.

“No,” Robb said. “The help I mean to ask is for you to listen to my brothers. They both have seen this monster with their own eyes. Bran has knowledge of it that no one else does. I’m not asking anything of you until you have spoken to them. Until you have seen for yourself.”

“And if I don’t see it?” Dany asked.

“Then I will have lost,” Robb admitted. He had an exhausted set to his mouth, but he flashed half a smile. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

Dany looked at him. She tried to see a lie. She knew better than to trust every man who smiled at her, and she knew better than to trust pretty men, and she knew better than to trust people who wanted things from her. But being wary did not have to mean distrusting everyone, and Robb…

She would not give up her throne for him. But she could hear him out. She could speak to his brothers. Cersei Lannister may have been comfortable ignoring threats to her realm, but Dany would not be that sort of queen. If there was a chance that the Starks were right…

“The two of us,” she said. “We can go. We can go _tomorrow_. Drogon can get us there. I told you I wanted to see how fast they could fly.”

Robb looked slightly pale at the thought, and Dany waited, one eyebrow raised. _If this is what you want_ , her posture said, _then we will be doing it my way_. Traveling all the way north would take too long otherwise, and he would have to be much madder than he seemed if he thought to harm her when alone with her and one of her dragons.

“Are you sure that’s wise?” he asked. “Will they allow it?”

“If by ‘they’ you mean my advisors, I hadn’t intended to tell them,” Dany said. “Only Missandei. She can inform the others when we’ve gone.” She watched his reaction. His eyes had gone to the window. She imagined he was scanning for signs of the dragons outside. Her smile widened. “Do you trust me?” she asked. His eyes went back to hers. He was more serious than she expected.

“I do,” he said. It was not said with hesitation, but there was something guarded in him anyway. “Perhaps that’s a foolish answer, but I do.”

“Why would it be foolish?”

“Am I not your prisoner?” Robb pointed out. Dany smiled again.

“Only technically,” she pointed out. “I didn’t think you’d noticed.”

“I noticed.”

“I learned not to trust people. You can leave at any time, but you will be followed, and shadowed, until you get back north. And you won’t have your alliance. I wouldn’t call that a prisoner.”

“No. Maybe not. Davos is convinced you wouldn’t let us leave.”

“ _Davos_ is convinced. And you?”

“I hadn’t decided. I learned not to trust people too. I do trust you. But trust…”

He shook his head. Rueful. She knew he was thinking of that wedding again. She longed to move closer to him. She didn’t.

“Yes,” she said. “I know what trust can do. And yet I trust you.”

Robb nodded.

“I’ll ride with you,” he said. “If you think Drogon will let me.”

“If I’m with you, he will,” Dany promised.

“Not tomorrow. The day after. We should prepare. And I should send a raven.”

“Done,” Dany said. She felt…

Like a girl, she realized. Like a child. Preparing to sneak out. Getting into mischief. It wasn’t something she’d ever had the luxury of doing. She could imagine herself younger. Giggling with her brother over some prank they were pulling on the castle guard. Perhaps it would be a Kingsguard. Arthur Dayne. Perhaps even Jaime Lannister. Young and unsullied by the murder of her father. Would he have indulged them? Chased them around? Played with them? She wondered what he had done with his own children when they grew up in front of him. Belonging to his sister and her husband in name. She wondered if his children had laughed and played the way Robb and his siblings had. What could it have been like, if she had been afforded the same opportunity?

_I am not that girl_ , she reminded herself. _I am this woman. This is an important undertaking. It is the future of the realm. We aren’t sneaking out to do mischief. We’re leaving because our advisors would otherwise slow things down, and I don’t want to waste any more time._

Still. What could the harm be in indulging herself, just a little?

“Brienne won’t be happy with me,” Robb said. He was amused, too. She could see the mirth behind his eyes, and the way he seemed giddy with the possibility. “She’ll probably take it as a personal failing that I managed to slip away from her.”

“Order her to guard the Kingslayer in your absence,” Dany said dryly. “Perhaps she’ll thank you for it.”

“No, but _he_ will,” Robb laughed. He looked as young as she felt.

The suddenness of want stole over her. She couldn’t _wait_ to show him what it was like to fly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Father's Land by Jordan Critz


	41. Arya IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya watches Jon and Sansa, speaks to Bran, and learns about the dragon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have three chapters left of my edits for the second draft! It's a significant amount of work still to do, but it's so close I can almost taste it. Things should start moving a little quicker once I have the time to finish it. Thank you to everyone reading and commenting! I'm trying to catch up on comment replies, but there are so many comments in my inbox that it is genuinely overwhelming! (and wonderful!) So it may take me some time!

Arya didn’t even need to use the faces to remain unseen by the people she wanted to stay hidden from, but it was easier when she did. No one looked twice at serving girls or soldiers. Guard uniforms were less exciting than drapery to important people. Scullery maids were the easiest, especially ones who weren’t pretty or interesting. There were men who would still try it, of course, but fewer of them, and they were often easier to take down. It was less of a distraction. Arya could scrub at floors all day, and she’d learn _everything_ from people too stupid to pay her any attention.

She was glad that she didn’t need Littlefinger’s face anymore. He was an unpleasant man to pretend to be. The northern lords had finally accepted that he was a snake, and Yohn Royce had denounced him publicly and revoked his title or whatever it was they had to do to take a lord down a bit. The Blackfish did his job in the Vale, and all _those_ lords cast votes to oust him.

Of course, Lord Baelish had conveniently disappeared in the dead of night, and no one knew where to find him.

_He’ll turn up_ , they all said. Sansa assured them that they would send people to hunt him down. Jon had looked uncomfortable with all the lying, but he _always_ looked uncomfortable lately, so no one thought anything of it. Arya still had the face, because she never liked to get rid of a useful tool, but she was glad to keep it shoved in the bottom of the bag where it belonged.

There were better faces to wear. Littlefinger drew too much attention, and Arya wanted to blend. She liked hearing gossip. Most of it was about Sansa and Jon and Robb, because they were the lords and the lady, and that was who servants _always_ gossiped about. There were smaller stories playing out throughout the castle, and they might not be _important_ stories, but Arya liked them more. A maid named Tansy thought some northern lord was going to marry her now that his wife had died of a winter chill. A stablehand named Dil was marrying a goatherd named Alys because they were friends who couldn’t marry the people they were _really_ in love with, which seemed like a neat solution all around. People talked about Jon’s friends Sam and Gilly, too, and how she was a wildling, and all these rumors that Arya didn’t like listening to about where her boy came from.

Actually, there were a lot of rumors Arya didn’t like hearing. She avoided the servants who had worked in the castle when Ramsay Bolton was around, because the first time she heard one of the stories they told about what he’d done to Sansa, Arya had to retreat to her room so she could keep herself from crying. It was just a surprise, was all. She wasn’t expecting to hear it. After that, she avoided any mention of it. Sansa hadn’t told her anything like that, and if Sansa wanted her to know, Sansa would have told her.

The wildlings talked about Jon, too. Those rumors were easier to listen to, though she still felt a squirming awkwardness when they talked about Jon’s wildling lady and her red hair and her dying at the hands of some other Crow. She didn’t like hearing about his death, either, but she liked how it had made all the wildlings think he was important. Not that they wouldn’t have followed him anyway, but she couldn’t fault their logic. She’d follow the man who got brought back to life too, probably.

When she had her faces on, she could watch anybody. And it wasn’t like she _meant_ to spy on Jon and Sansa. But, well. They were her family. She was curious. It was no more than what she would have done when she and Bran were children, always sneaking around in the walls and spying. Their family had been bigger, then. There were more of them. But they had also been _way_ less interesting.

She _knew_ why Sansa was acting weird. She knew that Sansa was trying to stop being so weird, and she’d even gotten better at being more civil to Jon without looking at him all moonily. She didn’t avoid him or snap at him. She just acted all polite and distant and smiled like a normal person. Jon still seemed a bit hurt by it, but at least he didn’t look anymore like he’d been slapped, so that was an improvement.

The thing Jon _did_ do was watch Sansa. Not in such an odd way, Arya didn’t think. But he always looked at her like he was trying to figure something out. And he always looked _concerned_ for her. Not just like it was because he noticed her being weird around him, but like he was worried about her all the time. How much did he know about what Sansa had gone through? He didn’t show it when he was with her. When he was with her, he was blank and kind, but when he was watching her, he was different.

It wasn’t like Arya understood. Or wanted to understand. Or wanted to know, even. Actually, she’d rather just ignore the whole thing and pretend it wasn’t happening, but it wasn’t _her_ to ignore something that was making her family unhappy.

So she watched. She listened. She learned.

Maybe it _was_ disgusting, but Arya didn’t really think like that anymore. Everything was different for everybody. She’d met too many people and heard too many of their stories to judge people for the things they didn’t choose to feel. She hadn’t needed Sansa's apologies in the courtyard that day when she’d called Arya a lady and said she was sorry for the way she used to think about things like that. But Arya had appreciated it anyway. It was nice to know that Sansa wanted to be friends like they were when they were really young and Sansa thought Arya would be another little lady just like her. It was nice that Sansa understood better now too how people were just different from each other, and how that was _fine_.

There wasn’t any right or wrong way to think or be as long as you weren’t hurting anybody with it, and that was why the weirdness with Sansa and Jon didn’t bother Arya so much. Not that it _didn’t_ bother her. But it bothered her less than it would have before. She’d learned a lot on her journey, and she knew now how rare it was for people to be happy the way her family was when they were growing up. Especially in these times, with all the wars and the death, people weren’t having an easy time of it. Everyone was dying. Everyone was starving. Miserable. Getting hurt and killed in some fancy lord’s war that had nothing do with them. She saw it everywhere, and now it seemed like the right thing, for people to go after those bits of happiness that they could find. And if Jon and Sansa made each other happy…well, why not?

She could see it, was the thing. She was good now at figuring things out like that. Answering _why_ questions for herself. She knew they didn’t know each other much when they were growing up. Sansa and Jon were as close to strangers as they could have possibly been while they were living in the same castle. Sansa was too much of a lady, and Catelyn was too watchful. Arya was good at sneaking around it, but Sansa hadn’t even _wanted_ to. She’d wanted to make their mother happy, and that meant avoiding Jon and being a proper little lady and whatever else. Theon was probably more a brother to Sansa than Jon ever had been, and Theon used to talk about _marrying_ her. Jon and Sansa almost never spoke. They never spent any real time together, especially not just the two of them. It must have been a surprise to meet each other again and realize they were strangers. Probably even more surprising when they realized they were strangers who already loved each other.

Sansa still thought it was Cersei’s fault somehow, like Cersei had infected her with a desire to fuck her brother, but Arya didn’t think that was it. First of all, because that was ridiculous, and that wasn’t how things worked. But also because Sansa wasn’t anything like Cersei at all, and she wasn’t like Littlefinger, and she wasn’t like Ramsay Bolton either. She wore those masks sometimes in the same way Arya wore her faces, because it was easier to hide than let your true face be shown. Arya knew how _that_ felt. But that didn’t mean she _was_ those faces. It meant that she wanted to hide. Sansa wanted to hide because she was afraid. Arya understood that, as well. And fear didn’t make Sansa the same as Cersei.

Cersei was afraid, too. Arya hadn’t seen the queen in years, but she understood her better now. She knew what it was like to be afraid, and she knew that fear could turn men and women evil, and she knew that understanding those fears didn’t mean excusing what those fears made people do. Things were more complicated than she used to think they were, and maybe _that_ was part of why it didn’t bother her so much, too.

It wasn’t anything nearly so bad as Sansa seemed to think, anyway. It was very…maybe not understandable. But it followed. Arya could follow it. She could see where it started and she could see where it led, and there was nothing in that line was broken or twisted, whatever Sansa thought.

And Jon. Jon was harder to read. He always had been, but he’d become better at hiding things than he used to be. He’d had to learn. She knew that without having to ask. He was wary of things, too. Keeping things closed up tight because he didn’t trust people the way he used to. That was true of all of them except maybe Bran, she thought. All of them had come back a bit more bitter than they had been before they left Winterfell. Meeting each other again was having to relearn everything. Even Jon, who she had always known best, was _different._ He was much more difficult to figure out.

Sometimes she wished he was _more_ difficult to figure out. Because he watched Sansa, and she finally had to acknowledge that she knew why.

“It’s just weird, isn’t it?” she asked. Bran was staring at her. He had this insufferable, patient look on his face that reminded Arya too much of their mother whenever Arya got into some mischief and was trying to explain her way out.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

“You don’t just _know_ what I’m talking about?” Arya asked. Bran sighed. A long, irritated sound. He was always doing that. Arya liked it because it was the most emotion he usually showed. He kept saying he wasn’t Bran anymore. But whoever he was now, he thought Arya was _very_ annoying. It made him seem more Bran. Arya knew it was stupid to hope, but she couldn’t help it: she hoped maybe the more he got annoyed with her, the more he would remember her, and the more he would remember himself.

“It doesn’t work like that,” he said patiently, and for a second it was like he was seeing into her thoughts, though of course he was just talking about her being annoyed that he _couldn’t_.

“More shit powers,” Arya pointed out with exaggerated sorrow. “I’m talking about Jon and Sansa. They’re weird. They’re weird about each other. It’d be weird if they did anything about it, but I almost think I would rather have it be weird than _miserable_. Which is what it is now. All that looking after each other. Acting like they’re not doing it. Acting like they don’t care at _all_ about each other because they’re too nervous to show too much. I thought it was just Sansa at first, but it isn’t. It’s Jon, too. They’re _both_ doing it. Seems like they might as well stop and just admit it to themselves. And maybe there’s a reason, anyway. Maybe there’s a reason they found out the way they did, _when_ they did, that they aren’t brother and sister really.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Bran said. Arya grinned and leaned against the wall beside him, acting casual because she thought it would annoy him more. She wanted him to be annoyed. _She_ was annoyed with _him_.

“I want you to tell me if it’s weird.”

“That isn’t something I can answer for you.”

“Sure you can. Listen. It’s not like I don’t think it’s odd. It’s odd for certain. But if they…”

“What is the point of this?” Bran asked. Arya couldn’t help but chuckle.

“I just want to know if it’s good or bad.”

“Arya,” Bran sighed. He was trying to sound all dignified about it, too, but he sounded like a kid again, and Arya clung to that with a kind of savage hope.

“I just mean, will they be good for each other? Will they make each other happy? I know you think we’re all going to perish horribly in the war against the dead…”

“I don’t think that,” Bran said. “I said we need to be prepared for…”

“But if we do somehow survive…they’re my family. I want them to be happy. They aren’t happy like this. They’re both so afraid of each other, and all they want to do is spend their time together. There shouldn’t be anything bad in that. Well, maybe a little bit bad. But like a normal amount of bad, not...”

“Yes,” Bran blurted. He had his eyes closed. She couldn’t tell if he was doing some weird future-seeing thing or just annoyed with her. Either way, he opened his eyes after and met hers. He didn’t look annoyed, but he _felt_ annoyed, and she grinned wider.

“Yes,” she repeated.

“If they survive, yes. It would make them happy. I don’t know what else you want from me.”

“That was enough,” Arya said. She bent down and kissed him on the forehead. He looked more annoyed than ever. He very stubbornly refused to wipe it off, but she could tell he wanted to. “Was that so hard?”

He glared at her. He wanted to say something, she could tell. Tell her off or remind her that it didn’t work that way or _something_. But he knew engaging with her would only make it worse. And, well, he was right about _that_ , at least.

* * *

When she saw Sansa again, a few hours later, it was easier to read it clearly.

Sansa still woke in the night from nightmares about what she had suffered. She kept her scarred skin hidden away from everyone but her handmaids, who gossiped about it the way they gossiped about everything else, sad and sorry for her. And Jon didn’t quite fear the same things, but he woke shaking and cold most nights, and his own skin had the evidence of his death still etched into it. They both were creatures of discomfort, but it was different when they were together. They were comfortable then. They were happy then. Or they could be, anyway, if they stopped worrying their stupid heads about all the things they had been worrying about.

Sansa didn’t seem very happy when Arya saw her. She was holding a letter when Arya entered the office, and she shook it in Arya’s direction

“A dragon!” she said, practically yelling in frustration, like it was a continuation of a conversation she and Arya had been having before.

“What about a dragon?” Arya asked with an indulgent smile, snapping the letter away from Sansa before Sansa could stop her.

The letter was from Robb, and it did indeed mention a dragon almost immediately. She knew why Sansa was angry—taking the dragon queen and her dragon on a trip to the north in an impulsive bit of sneaking was very _Robb_ of him—but she couldn’t think of anything except for the fact that she would be seeing Robb again soon.

She could remember that horrible wedding. Outside, with The Hound, knowing that it was hopeless but wanting to go in anyway because that was her _brother_. That had been another missed opportunity at rescue, hadn’t it? If only The Hound had waited to make sure. Or if they had seen the Blackfish squirreling Robb away before the Freys spotted him. She could have gone with him. She could have been with Robb all this time. What would _that_ have been like?

“He’s coming here,” she breathed. Sansa’s anger deflated quickly. Her smile was a bit indulgent and a bit sad, all at once. She still treated Arya like a child sometimes. Less than Jon did, and probably less than Robb would, but sometimes she didn’t seem like she could help it. This was one of those times.

“He is,” she said. “On a _dragon_.”

“You’re trying to make that sound like a bad thing, but it’s the best thing I’ve ever heard,” Arya pointed out. Sansa sighed and snatched the letter back.

“Jon would agree with me,” she said. “He should have been given more advance notice. She’s his _aunt_. What if he’s not ready to meet her?”

“Jon _would_ agree with you,” Arya agreed blithely. “But only because Jon agrees with you about everything. You know he doesn’t mind about things for himself.”

Sansa looked surprised by the comment, and she frowned in Arya’s direction as if trying to figure out if Arya was joking or not. Arya’s expression was entirely innocent, but Sansa was too savvy to believe even her best lies, most of the time. Whether she believed Arya or not, she didn’t say anything. She looked like she might be too nervous to. She always dodged any sort of conversation about it.

“I should tell him,” she said.

“You should,” Arya agreed. Sansa hesitated, and Arya thought about telling her what Bran had said. No, that was too much. Sansa wasn’t ready to talk about that. Arya didn’t need any stupid raven powers to tell her _that_. “I’m sure it won’t be so terrible, Sansa. It’s just Robb and one woman. How bad could it be?”

“Robb and one woman?” Sansa asked pointedly. Wry, and just slightly bitter. Arya couldn’t help but laugh.

“All right,” she said. “Robb and one woman can do a bit of damage. But what are the odds of that happening twice?”

“Gods, shut up,” Sansa muttered, and she turned and stalked away, leaving Arya laughing behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Optimist by Zoë Keating


	42. Sansa IX

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The dragons arrive in Winterfell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to hold off on posting until tomorrow, but my busy weekend just got even BUSIER thanks to a busted transmission, so I'm going to post this tonight and then say it's very likely that I won't be able to post again until I get my car situation sorted out, since I'm not currently at home lmao. Luckily it's a long one!

The morning was clear enough that the guards were able to warn of the approaching dragons when they were still quite far away. The whole castle had been anticipating the arrival since the sun came up, and the guards—normally such staid northern soldiers—were nearly giddy when they made the announcement. Sansa, Jon, and Arya all hurried up to the walls to watch.

They’d asked Bran if he wanted to come, but Bran’s answer had been, “I’ve seen them already,” in a tone that seemed less than impressed. Arya had laughed loudly, breaking the tension, and she was still grinning to herself about it even as they watched the impossible shape of the dragons fly closer.

Sansa hadn’t been able to laugh. She was too frightened for that. Daenerys Targaryen was a powerful woman. Three dragons, and the apparent worshipful devotion of armies from across the sea. That was all Sansa knew about her, and it was a worrying glimpse. _Robb_ knew her, or claimed to in his letters. Brienne never claimed anything quite so lofty, though she had written of the dragon queen’s kindness in the past. Jaime’s last letter mentioned that he hadn’t yet spoken to Daenerys, but that Tyrion thought she was a queen worth following. Jaime also seemed to think Daenerys would execute him once he was well enough that she could make a show of it, so that didn’t speak particularly well of her, Sansa didn’t think, even if Jaime _did_ kill her father. Perhaps Daenerys would benefit from hearing Bran’s thoughts on forgiveness and understanding, too.

Sansa wanted to trust her brother’s judgement, and she wanted to trust Tyrion’s, too. But it was an enormous leap. It was no small thing to trust someone based on the words of others, and she had been burned too many times. She had trusted Littlefinger because he was her mother’s friend. She had trusted Cersei because Cersei was the _queen_. She had trusted Aunt Lysa because Aunt Lysa was her mother’s sister, and surely _she_ would keep Sansa safe. People showed themselves to her, over and over, revealing their true selves beneath their pretty painted faces, and still Sansa had trusted until it was finally beaten out of her soundly enough.

_You trusted Jon because he was your brother, and_ that _didn’t go wrong_.

She looked at Jon. He was gazing out at the dragons as they approached. His expression was impossible to decipher, as his expressions often were. She wondered if _he_ felt they could trust Daenerys. His aunt. His _family_.

She’d heard, of course, plenty of rumors about the dragon queen's beauty. Brienne had described her as _pleasing to look at_ , which, considering the source, was practically a full poem in praise of her good looks. Jaime had made some comment in his letter about other men being swayed by her beauty, _but I wasted my life on a beautiful woman with a fondness for fire, and I am in no danger of making that mistake a second time._ But it wasn’t Jaime she was concerned about, and it certainly wasn’t Brienne; Robb had already given his heart once unwisely to a beautiful woman, and he had lost everything for love of her.

_I trust Robb_ , she told herself, every time she started to worry. _I trust Robb. He won’t make those same mistakes. He knows better now._

But it was an easy thing to tell herself. It was a less easy thing to believe it. Less easy, too, to swallow back her fear in front of her siblings and her cousin, especially when Jon and Arya watched her so carefully. They knew she was worried _about_ Robb. She had been a prisoner in a hostile court once, and so maybe it was inevitable that she would be concerned about Robb’s position now. But it wasn’t _just_ Robb’s position that frightened her. She kept thinking of last time. Last time, when he abandoned her. Last time, when her mother had to set Jaime free and betray her own army because Robb wouldn’t risk the wrath of the northern lords to take the chance to save her. _Her._ His sister. He said, all through their childhood—he _promised_ —that he would protect her. When she was frightened of storms. When Old Nan told too many ghost stories. When they played at knights and maidens in the wood. She wasn’t a child anymore, but those promises of childhood were what kept her hoping in Kings Landing. _He promised. He promised. He will come for me and protect me. He’ll kill all of you._

But he hadn’t. It had been a double blow: the realization that he would not give up Jaime Lannister for her safety followed almost immediately by the news of the Red Wedding. He had been too dead to hate for long. Too dead to blame. She had loved and missed him too much to dwell on it and resent it properly.

But now…

It was just like last time. Last time, when he abandoned Sansa as lost and then gave up his crown for love of a woman he had only just met.

_It isn’t the same. He won’t make the same mistakes._ She told herself as much over and over as they waited, but she couldn’t stop it completely. Littlefinger used to always tell her to expect the worst. Think of the worst reason a person would have for doing something, and assume that was the truth. She hadn’t taken the advice to heart when it was _him_ she was going up against, though she should have, because it was good advice.

What was the worst reason she could think of for Robb to align himself with Daenerys Targaryen? What was the worst reason she could think of for Robb to take Daenerys _here_ , on the back of a dragon, with no one else accompanying them?

_He fancies himself in love again, and he wants to show her the north. Her new land. That’s the worst reason._

An alliance would be good against Cersei. It would be good against the dead. Bran said that they needed her, and Robb had gotten her. But had he bent the knee? _Would_ he bend the knee? Were they to be absorbed back into Westeros after all? And what would become of Sansa? Would she be married off to strengthen the alliance to one of the dragon queen’s people? Re-married to Tyrion, perhaps? Or given to someone else they needed stronger bonds with?

If he was in love, would he allow it? He’d allowed his love of a woman to cloud his love for his sisters before. She could not say with confidence that he wouldn’t do it again.

The dragons approached, and Sansa knew that it didn’t matter why. It didn’t matter what he had done. It didn’t even matter what would happen to her in the future. They had no chance against the dragon queen. Maybe _that_ was why.

The size of the dragons, even so far out…it would be impossible to face a woman with _one_ of those beasts. Three of them? They would stand no chance. Cersei had _no_ dragons and they were still perhaps outmatched by her. Ramsay Bolton had only had _dogs_ , and Sansa still woke sobbing in the night when she dreamed of him. It would be utter madness to try and go against dragons.

If bringing the dragons to Winterfell was meant to be a reminder of that impossible superiority, Daenerys had already made her point, and she hadn’t even landed yet.

“We should be in the courtyard to greet them,” Jon said, and Sansa nodded. She didn’t want to be up on the walls when the dragons approached, anyway. Not that that was at all logical; everyone knew the story of Harrenhal. Everyone knew what little good stone walls and stone keeps were against dragonfire. But her fears were not always the rational kind, and she _was_ afraid.

She saw the expressions on the faces of the others as she and Arya and Jon walked down the stairs and into the courtyard. Sandor Clegane was glowering up at the sky. Bran had his eyes closed, still apparently disinterested. Beric and his men were eager, watching the sky for the shape of the creatures. Most of the rest were a mix of terrified and hopeful. Sansa could understand. It wasn’t every day that myths came to life, and even frightening myths could also be exciting ones. Arya’s expression was hopeful, too, though Sansa knew that had less to do with the dragons and more to do with the fact that Robb was being carried by one of them.

Jon…Jon was still impossible to read. He stood close beside her, hunched in his Stark cloak, with his Stark hair and Stark beard untamed, a riot of inky black. It felt purposeful, like a show of allegiance he had chosen to make, though she wasn’t even sure if that was something he would do. He caught her looking at him, and he forced a smile that made her stomach ache.

The dragons could be heard before they could be seen from the courtyard. There were murmurs from the gathered watchers, who craned their necks to try and see above the walls. Then one of them flew overhead, fast and brilliant in the sunlight, and its wings sent a brutal gust of wind down among them, swirling their cloaks and heavy skirts and sending hay skittering across the mud. There was shrieking, and there was laughter, too, especially from the children. A few people cheered. Sansa couldn’t. Her face was a frozen mask. Jon’s hand skimmed down her arm once, comforting. His face was a mask, too, while Arya laughed and whooped with the rest of them. The other dragons were not far behind, and their wings made heavy sounds that shook the air as they hovered and landed somewhere out of sight, beyond the gates. A guard called down that the king and the dragon queen had dismounted the dragon and were now approaching. Sansa nodded. The gates began to open.

Robb was walking towards them. The dragons remained in the snowy plain behind them, massive and alert. The cheering got louder, but it wasn’t only cheers. Sansa saw discontent as well as excitement. She saw nervous grumbling as much as she saw awe. Robb was smiling, windblown and handsome. He wasn’t wearing his crown. Daenerys was on his arm. Both of them looked young, giddy. Beautiful.

She _was_ beautiful, the dragon queen. She had the Targaryen hair that Sansa used to dream about, white and shimmering in the sunlight. Her pale cheeks were prettily pink from the cold, and her hair was dishevelled from the wind, but she looked young and light and unburdened. She made Sansa feel old before her time. She made Sansa feel too tall, too awkward, too serious.

Yes, for once the rumors had the right of it. The dragon queen was beautiful, and Sansa’s brother looked as if he knew it. Walking beside her, he looked at her often. He was laughing, amused by something that had happened on their flight. Only when his eyes traveled to the gate did his smile fade, replaced by something much softer.

Arya had already begun to run. She looked like a child again, sprinting out through the gates. Propriety said they should stand in formation until the northern king and the dragon queen were within Winterfell to be received properly, but Arya had never had much use for propriety, and it made Sansa smile at last to watch her. It looked just like how it used to when father and the boys would come back from hunting. Arya had always wanted to go, but she was never allowed. She would lurk around the gates like an abandoned pup, waiting until they were back so that she could tackle the first one to dismount his horse, always wanting to hear about who had shot what and who had done the best job, mostly so that she could claim that she would have done better.

Robb caught Arya in his arms just as he would have then. He spun her around. His eyes were squeezed shut. He was crying. Arya was, too. _Arya_. Sansa controlled the lump in her own throat by remembering that they were not safe just because Robb thought they were.

She thought of Kings Landing. She thought of how she had longed for him to hug _her_ like that. For him to stride through the city and spin her around and kill the Kingsguard who had beaten her and stripped her and humiliated her. She thought of his secret, hurried wedding to the woman he loved. She thought of his reluctance to risk the war for Sansa but his haste to throw away everything for Talisa. She thought of how safe she had felt in Winterfell again, reclaimed and widowed and left alone, secure in the knowledge that her brothers would not try to marry her off again. She thought of how unsafe she felt now. Her mask did not slip.

At last, Robb put Arya back on her feet and urged her inside the walls so that he could introduce Daenerys properly. The entire household was waiting. The murmuring had grown more quiet as everyone prepared to receive her, and it faded entirely once Robb was back within their walls. They were watching her, Sansa. _She_ would set the tone. They could not be allowed to see anything of her doubts from her.

Robb led the way, and he pulled Sansa into a hug. Warm and lighter than he had seemed when he left. Less burdened. More whole. The time away had done him good, and it was terrifying. What had made him whole again? It was happening just like last time.

Robb moved on to hug Jon, mussing his hair when he did so, which made Jon laugh, though the tension still had not left him. Then Robb stooped to hug Bran as well. Fierce and tight. Bran didn’t bother to return the gesture, instead choosing to gaze at the dragon queen blankly. Arya sighed and cleared her throat. Her eyes bulged out when Bran looked at her. Bran’s eyes narrowed in a way that was almost a glare, but he put one hand on Robb’s back in a lazy gesture to return the embrace.

“We have much to discuss,” he said, in what might have been an attempt at a friendly tone. Arya sighed even more loudly.

“Bran’s a bit odd now,” she said to Robb. “Don’t mind him.” She nudged him with her hip, eyebrows raised to remind him, as he stared down at Bran’s blank face, that he was meant to be making introductions, not just hugging his family and leaving Daenerys waiting behind him.

He _did_ introduce her then, and there was more nervousness coiling in Sansa’s stomach. There was a real warmth in his eyes and in his tone when he brought her forward with his arm outstretched.

_It happened again_ , she thought. She _knew._

Daenerys was stiff and formal and clearly nervous, and Sansa’s address to welcome her was the same. It should have made Sansa feel more at ease to know that Daenerys was as discomfited by all this as she was, but it didn’t. It made her feel instead sick, her nerves and her bitterness bubbling over from behind the wall where she thought they had been constrained.

_Please_ , she thought. _Not again._

Daenerys was still holding on to Robb’s arm, like a courting girl, and Sansa could not stop staring at her fingers. Graceful and pale, laid gently against the leather.

_He will be hers_ , she thought. _He will be hers, and he will give her everything she wants from him, and we will lose the war again. We will lose our home again. You will be married off to Tyrion. They will take you. You will have no choice. You will have no power to refuse them. They will call you a selfish little girl if you try to fight back._

“I hope you appreciate this,” Robb was saying to Jon. Jocular and kind as always, looking down at his queen with a small smile. “Because her advisors are going to be furious with us. And Brienne, of course.”

“You _left_ Brienne there?” Sansa asked.

“She will be perfectly safe,” Daenerys promised. “She and Davos both. Lady Brienne has earned quite a reputation among my people. They have enjoyed watching her spar with the best of my men. I’m happy to report her wins outweigh her losses.”

Sansa was relieved to hear that, and a bit relieved to hear the fond way that Daenerys spoke. She had been nervous, since the battle, since the display on the battlefield that both Robb and Tyrion had written about. Not that either man was very detailed in their descriptions of what had happened, but even their sparseness spoke of a scene that Daenerys would not have liked, if she meant to make the Kingslayer look like a monster defeated and not like a tragic figure coming close to dying in the arms of a woman who loved him.

“I suppose I should expect an angry letter from Tyrion soon,” she managed to say. Her polite mask was back. “Though dragons must fly a bit faster than ravens. Did you have to stop anywhere overnight?”

Robb told the story of the small holdfast they had commandeered for the night, and the enthusiasm and the mingled terror of the minor lord who had possession of it. Sansa found herself smiling and nodding along at all the right moments, but she wasn’t able, afterward, to say anything of what the conversation had been about. _It’s happening again_ was all she could think. Over and over. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t _fair._ She wanted to tell herself to stop. She wanted to tell herself that Robb would never, that he knew better this time. But she couldn’t stop looking at the dragon queen’s hand on his arm.

“Of course,” Daenerys suddenly said in response to something that Sansa hadn’t heard. Something Arya had said, judging by the way Daenerys was smiling at her. Jon’s hand was on Sansa’s back. When had _that_ happened? Had he noticed, too? She glanced at him and saw that he was already looking at her. He was plainly concerned.

“Follow me,” Daenerys said. “He’ll be well behaved as long as I’m with you.” She began to lead the way, with Arya following eagerly. Sansa balked when she realized what they were going to do, but she didn’t know how to put a stop to it without causing a scene. And the thing with Arya—the thing that had _always_ been true about Arya—was that she would double down on anything if she believed you didn’t want her to do it. She hated to be told what to do.

So Sansa swallowed her fear. Jon’s hand was light on her back, still, a bit of guiding pressure. Robb was looking at her oddly. She knew that he wanted to ask if she was all right. She thought she would scream at him if he did. He didn’t; he turned to follow Daenerys.

“Sansa,” Jon was saying. “We don’t have to if you don’t want to. You can stay right here.”

“No,” Sansa said. “You should go. You should meet her. She hasn’t even…”

“We already spoke, Sansa,” Jon said. “She was very kind. She called me nephew, remember?” He moved his hand higher, to the back of her neck, and it was a comfort to feel the slight squeeze of his chilled glove against her overheated skin. “Are you all right?”

“No,” Sansa admitted. She stared after Robb. They were walking to see the dragon, and half the citizens of Winterfell were following, wanting to see. Curious and frightened and excited. She couldn’t stay behind. They would think her craven if she didn’t. They would think her weak and quailing, or perhaps they would know that she didn’t trust. She started forward, and Jon’s hand dropped away. He followed her, came up alongside her. He offered her his arm, and she took it gratefully, feeling less shaky and less obviously nervous with his support.

“It took Robb safely all the way here,” Jon pointed out. “It’s all right. It won’t hurt us.”

The crowd parted for she and Jon as they walked. Her hands were wrapped tightly around his arm. She hoped he could not tell how scared she was, and how off-balanced.

By the time they caught up to Robb and the others, Daenerys was already standing out in front, holding up her hand so that the massive dragon could press its nose up against her fingers like an overlarge kitten. Arya laughed giddily, and more and more she sounded like a child, and Sansa felt that she was the only one left who wasn’t. The only one who couldn’t go back to the way she was before.

She released Jon and urged him forward, and he cast one more look back at her, brow furrowed. She smiled at him, trying to make it full and real to convince him she was all right.

Arya was talking with excitement to Robb, asking him how it felt to fly. Jon was approaching, looking nervous as he got closer to the dragon. His house sigil. The fact made Sansa even more discomfited. She was still quite a ways back. She couldn’t make herself get any closer. It was enormous, the dragon. When Robb’s letter said they would be riding it, she hadn’t known what to expect. But this…

Daenerys was talking to Jon. There was a pride and an assurance in her that Sansa envied. Daenerys knew exactly who she was. She was a woman with three dragons and an army. What did she have to fear? Her hand was on Jon's arm, too. Smiling at him. Claiming him as a nephew. She was so small and pretty. She didn’t tower over him the way Sansa did. She didn’t have any trouble smiling like she meant it. She was lovely. A lovely little bird, just like Sansa had been once, except Daenerys was a falcon or an eagle. Something with claws and a sharp beak that she could use to defend herself. Sansa felt like a hapless gull beside her.

Daenerys turned and looked at Sansa, and she smiled. Sansa returned the smile, though she could feel that it was false on her face. Daenerys excused herself and moved back towards Sansa as Robb and Arya remained close to the dragon. Sansa’s fear made her body tense, her muscles rigid. She was glad that they had kept Ghost in the kennel for this, because he always responded to her nerves and would not like her fear now, and yet she wished for him beside her. She would feel so much safer with her fingers buried in his fur.

“It took me a long time to gain control of my children,” Daenerys said in greeting. “But I’ve tamed them now.”

“How sure are you?” Sansa wondered.

“My advisors tell me that I need the northern alliance if I am to succeed in taking back my family’s seat. And now there is an army of the undead, and a _king_ of the undead, and there is not much hope of succeeding if my northern allies are lost. _And_ my family is here. My brother’s son.” She smiled warmly, and she drew her arm through Sansa’s. Her smile was calm, and Sansa felt like a child. She was so afraid. “I am _quite_ sure. We wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.”

Sansa allowed Daenerys to lead her forward, towards the dragon. Past Jon, who made a discontented noise and started forward before Daenerys shushed him and warned that he should not startle Drogon. Jon froze in place instantly as Sansa and Daenerys continued smoothly by. _Does she perhaps want to kill me?_ Sansa wondered. It turned her spine to steel. _Or does she want to frighten me? She won’t find that as easy as it was. Others got here first._

She stepped up to the dragon. Daenerys was beside her, smiling. Her arm was strong for someone so small and slight. She stuck out her hand, her palm lightly curled, and she arched her eyebrows at Sansa to indicate that she should do the same.

“Oh, gods,” Sansa murmured, but she did it anyway. Her people were watching, and Daenerys, and Jon, and she would not show her fear before them. The dragon moved slowly, its massive head raising and inching towards she and Daenerys before it finally bumped up against the dragon queen's palm. Daenerys pulled her hand back, just a bit, so that the dragon would move with her. Then her hand was level with Sansa’s, and the dragon’s nose bumped up against palm.

It was warm, which she supposed she should have expected. Dry, too. Its skin was scratchy, but not unpleasantly so. It felt like something left out in the sun. Like a rough rock not yet worn smooth by the water, resting on the riverbed and baking all day long. Sansa looked at Daenerys, and she saw that Daenerys was smiling at her. Sansa smiled back. Already it was less reluctant than it had been before.

* * *

It was a good play. Sansa had to admit that later, after they had all gone back inside the walls. Arya had not stopped gushing about the dragons and mocking The Hound to his face for being too afraid to get close to them. People kept climbing up to the battlements just to look at the beasts from behind the imagined safety of Winterfell’s walls. The wildlings especially seemed fascinated. Tormund kept lifting children up to his shoulders and threatening to toss them over the walls and feed them to the dragons while the children screamed and laughed. Sansa had been caught up in it too, until they had gone back to the courtyard and found Bran waiting, looking knowingly at all of them. Then she had remembered herself.

Yes, it had been a good play, and Sansa should have known better than to fall for it.

How quickly she had forgotten pretty, kind Margaery Tyrell and her promises and her assurances and her sweetness. Sansa still didn’t know exactly what it was that Margaery Tyrell had wanted from her, but she was supposed to be smarter at recognizing it now. It was obvious, wasn’t it? That Daenerys had been trying to win them over? She had been trying to win _Sansa_ over, and it had nearly worked.

Daenerys and Robb and Arya all walked ahead. Jon pushed Bran’s chair in towards the hall. Sansa suddenly felt silly for not preparing a better feast. What would Daenerys think of them? Would it show too much of their struggles with food if there was not as much of a spread as she was used to?

“Are you all right?” Jon asked her. She met his eyes over Bran’s head, and she nodded. She looked back over her shoulder. The gate was still open, and the dragons still lay in the field, resting. What would they eat? What would they do? What if they got hungry? Or bored? “They won’t hurt us,” Jon said. It was obviously a platitude, but she smiled and pretended that it made her feel better.

She wanted to retreat to her room like a child. She wanted to bar the door and hide under the covers and wait for everyone to leave. It was an old, buried impulse that she knew she couldn’t listen to. She was Sansa Stark, and she could not allow herself to look like a coward in her own home, even if she felt like weeping. She watched Robb’s head as he walked. She watched the way his curls bobbed as he turned to look at Arya and then Daenerys, watching their conversation. Daenerys was gracious and stiff, just like Sansa. She was hiding too. Was she hiding because she was nervous? Or was she hiding because she was false?

Jon was watching her. She had to pretend to be fine. Bran would know. Bran would know the intentions of the dragon queen. She breathed easier when she remembered it. Bran had been able to tell them Littlefinger’s aims and Littlefinger’s plots. Surely Daenerys would be as easy for him to read.

_You aren’t trapped_ , she remembered. _You aren’t trapped. Not yet._

She breathed easier. She closed her heart to the foolish, terrified little girl who still railed against this. She had to go to the hall. She couldn’t afford to look unhappy or weak or scared. She could only smile like a good little bird.

_Prove me wrong, Robb,_ she begged the back of his head as he entered the keep. _Please, please prove me wrong._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Fires at Night by Forget Gravity, which is one of my favorites (and was my most listened to Spotify song of the year actually!)


	43. Brienne VI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brienne deals with the fallout of Robb and Daenerys leaving, and she finally speaks to Jaime.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my car situation is still less than ideal, but I had a few spare hours to myself and chose to spend them editing 5.2k and posting so hopefully you all enjoy!!

Perhaps it was for the best that Robb left without first telling her of his plan. Brienne would have been unable to stop herself from calling him a child and a fool if he _had_ told her, and that wouldn’t have been very diplomatic.

She still couldn’t believe it. The physical distance that he and Daenerys believed they would be able to cover in a few days, firstly, but also that they had simply _left_. Robb left a _note_ behind for Brienne and Davos, as if that would suffice. Its tone had been cheeky, too. Unconcerned. Uncaring about the potential political ramifications of such a reckless choice. Brienne had been so enraged that she had gone out to train early, sparring until she was too _exhausted_ to be as angry as she wanted to be, but as soon as she had bathed and rested, she was back to being furious again. The _idiot_ _child_. Of all the fool things.

Not that she would have liked to go with them, but she _would_ have gone. What kind of sworn sword did she look like now? At best, Lady Sansa would be disappointed, and if anything happened to Robb, perhaps she would even _blame_ Brienne, and it was all Robb’s fault.

“You don’t have to tell _me_ ,” she said to Tyrion during the emergency meeting the queen’s hand called the afternoon Robb and Daenerys left. When it was clear that their notes hadn’t been some ill-advised prank and that they actually _had_ taken off on Drogon’s back to go north for a _visit_ , Tyrion thought it best to try and get a handle on things. That meant, in this case, pretending that everything was under control in public and berating everyone who hadn’t stopped them in private. “He left me here. I’m not happy about it either.”

She leveled Tyrion with what she hoped was a blankly stern look. She didn’t want him or any of them to see how nervous she truly was. _Or_ how angry she was to be left behind. Brienne wasn’t made for this, for the diplomacy and politics of it all. She’d hated being one of the three most visible northern-aligned people in Dragonstone already, but Robb was a smart politician for all he was also apparently still an impulsive boy. She felt safe as long as he was always standing out in front of her, drawing attention with his passionate words and his empathetic speeches. Now it was she and Davos: a former smuggler and a sworn sword, both of whom once served Robert Baratheon’s brothers. It wasn’t ideal. The last thing she needed was for rumors to spread about her anger with her king. It would look like disloyalty. It would look like a lack of faith. In actuality, it was annoyance that Robb had chosen to do the stupidest possible thing, but she understood why it might look like something else from the outside.

Just…a _note_? What was the matter with him?

“We can’t let word spread that the queen has disappeared with her dragons,” Tyrion said, turning away from Brienne at last with a sympathetic half-smile, apparently choosing to believe that she had no part in this. “She’s already done that once, and they’ll think it’s the same. She’ll look inconstant at best. Impulsive, more likely. If anyone asks, she and Robb went to scout the land around Kings Landing to plan our attack. We are not worried that she isn’t back yet. This is exactly what she said she was going to do. Is that clear to everyone?”

Brienne watched the other advisors. Missandei was the only one who didn’t seem very worried; she had a faith in Daenerys that sometimes reminded Brienne of the faith she had once had in Renly, though she knew that Missandei’s heart belonged to Grey Worm. Grey Worm looked uncomfortable, but he was the first to nod in answer to Tyrion’s question. Varys was frowning, probably because this was one scheme he had no hand in, but he nodded as well. Davos glowered impressively, but he didn’t hesitate before following suit.

Tyrion gave another withering sigh. Brienne wanted to remind him that Robb's friends had more to fear than he did; those dragons were loyal to her. If Robb was mad enough or wicked enough to try and harm her, Drogon would make quick work of him. Not that he _would_. Robb was Robb. He was honorable and good, and when he made mistakes, they were for love, not cruelty.

That didn’t always make it better. And Tyrion would likely laugh in her face if she tried to say something of the sort to assure him. But the distinction was important to _Brienne_ , who could not help comparing Robb’s follies with the things that Jaime had done. Love was a cruel thing. It made men do monstrous things. What did it make women do? She wasn’t sure. For herself, love had only made her angry and hurt. Heartbroken. Perhaps it would have been different, if she had loved more wisely. Her choices had been abominable so far.

But no, that wasn’t right. They weren’t choices at all. She never would have chosen Renly. She certainly would not have chosen Jaime. It was so much easier not to love.

Tyrion dismissed she and Davos. Gently, but it was obvious that he wanted to discuss strategy with his people, and Brienne and Davos would be unwelcome in those conversations. On her way to the door, Tyrion called her back. Hesitant. Like he hadn’t thought to, and suddenly found himself speaking her name and asking for a moment of her time. She waved Davos on ahead, and Tyrion excused himself from the others briefly, following Brienne out of the room.

She had been so concerned with smoothing over the disappearance of the king and queen, and suddenly she remembered why she had been avoiding Tyrion’s presence until now.

“Tyrion,” she said, stiffly.

“Just a single conversation,” Tyrion asked. Gentle and polite, like she was some kind of injured fawn and he was the kind-hearted soul trying to save it without causing it further anxiety. “I know that he deserves your scorn and your silence.” Brienne almost laughed. Scorn and silence? Was that what he thought she was doing? Tyrion didn’t notice her amusement, and he continued, and the earnestness of his expression bothered her. He had only ever been _wry_ with her before. She was uncomfortable with anything else. “But at least let him apologize. You care for my brother. Don’t bother to deny it.”

“I wouldn’t,” Brienne said. She may not have denied it even if he had said “love” instead of the much easier-to-admit “care for”. She couldn’t quite understand him. Was that really what he thought? Was that what _Jaime_ thought?

“He knows he shouldn’t have goaded you.”

“He didn’t _goad_ me. He tricked me. Because he wanted to die. I understand why he did it.”

Tyrion flinched at what he probably thought was coldness in her tone. She didn’t think it was coldness at all. It felt sparkling and warm, to her. A riot of emotions. _Too much._ She’d heard so many things about Tyrion’s cleverness, but he didn’t understand at all why she’d avoided Jaime’s rooms.

Jaime wouldn’t remember, of course. The way he wept when he woke in those days immediately after the battle. The way he still so clearly wished she had killed him. Angry? How could Tyrion believe her angry? She was terrified of him. Jaime returned to himself and realizing that he was still alive. Jaime who still might face the flames, if Daenerys willed it, and who would otherwise be used as a hostage or convinced to bend the knee and turn against the sister he loved. Brienne had saved his life, but it was a life he didn’t want any longer, and she was so afraid to see him again and see the loathing in his expression. How could Tyrion think she was angry? Jaime hadn’t chosen despair. He hadn’t chosen to want to die. She could only think of the way that Robb described his own blankness after the wedding. The emptiness and the coldness and the fact that nothing had pierced it for so long. It was a sickness inside Jaime as it had been a sickness inside Robb, and she could not be angry with him for that. He never would have done what he did if he was in his right mind, and she knew that, because she knew _him_. She had loved Jaime. She still loved Jaime. She understood him too well now to hate him for his choice—or to think it was a true choice at all.

“I can’t make his apologies for him,” Tyrion was continuing, heedless of her incredulous expression. “I won’t ask you to forgive him. I know he doesn’t expect that, either. I only ask that you speak with him. Just once, just so he knows for sure. If it’s to tell him that you wish to never speak to him again, well, I won’t be happy with you for it, but I’ll understand it, and I’ll help him through it. But he needs something from you. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think it was important to his recovery.”

“The maester said he was recovering well,” Brienne argued softly, because she didn’t want to snap at Tyrion about how little he understood. She knew she would go already. Fear had kept her away long enough, and if Jaime truly wished to speak with her, perhaps he wasn’t even very angry. And even if he was, perhaps she could withstand it. Hear it and fire back with her own. She would not apologize for saving his life, but she could try and help, if he let her. Try and help him want to live. She’d done it once. She had no doubt that it wouldn’t be as easy this time around, but she could hope.

Tyrion just sounded so resigned to the idea that Brienne could simply…stop speaking to Jaime. Stop caring for him. Stop thinking about him. _I would never_ , she wanted to say, but now she could see how it might look from the outside. She had avoided him so far, ever since he had awoken. She knew from Robb and from Tyrion and even from _Podrick_ that Jaime was asking for her, and yet she had stayed away. She had been too afraid that she would be _right_ about what she would find, and even if she wasn’t…she was afraid to face any of it. Anything that he would offer her. She hadn’t wanted to hear his apologies. She hadn’t wanted anger, or hatred, or even explanations or soft smiles or whatever else he might give her. She wanted him to be _better,_ and she was afraid that she would find him unchanged. Hollow. Desperate for forgiveness or perhaps desperate still to die. Fear. It all was fear. Perhaps she had taken on the aspect of a trapped animal. The fear of trapped animals could turn to anger, sometimes. Maybe that was what Tyrion saw. But he had a point. Had she really meant to avoid Jaime forever? Dodge his summons until she and Robb and Davos were away? That seemed impossible now.

She was never avoiding him out of anger. She was avoiding him out of…well. She felt so many things. She had shown so many things on the battlefield. She was afraid of what she would say or do when she saw him again, and she was afraid of what _he_ might say or do as well. That was all it was.

Anger, fine. Anger had its place, too. But she found it difficult to be angry with Jaime for very long. It wasn’t anything to do with her love, either. It was difficult because she knew him, and she understood him. He had known that he could not win against her. He had known that his men could not win against the might of the dragon queen’s army. He’d failed Cersei. He’d failed his men. If he was taken alive, he would be burned or executed in some painful, humiliating way as a message to the dragon queen’s enemies. Brienne wasn’t sure that was true, but she knew it was what Jaime had expected. He had killed Aerys. He had killed the dragon queen’s father, and if Cersei had got her hands on Tyrion, of course she would have made Tyrion’s death as painful as possible, and Jaime had probably heard Cersei planning Tyrion’s death half a hundred times. Brienne knew why he wanted to die. She understood even if she couldn’t understand his love and support for his sister, and even if she couldn’t understand why he hadn’t snuck away yet now that he was better.

Love didn’t necessarily _help_ when it came to staying angry. Her anger faded faster when she thought of how she loved him. But her love wasn’t the only thing. She was hurt. She still loved him. She still despaired for him. She was still afraid of him. She was afraid _for_ him most of all. She didn’t know how to face a man who despaired so passionately.

“He is recovering well,” Tyrion allowed. “Physically. But the rest...”

“I’ll visit him,” she said, and Tyrion sagged with relief.

* * *

She knocked on Jaime’s door, and his reply was muffled and indistinct. She hesitated. Had it been a refusal?

No. He wanted to see her. Tyrion had been clear.

She opened the door, and she entered, and he met her eyes immediately.

She had not spoken to him since he was fully awake. She had known that, of course, but seeing him again made her remember that fact almost _violently_.

He had been weak and pliable but still so fierce with _something_ whenever he woke in those first days. She’d had to hold him down sometimes, her palms on his shoulders pinning him to the bed, because otherwise he would struggle and try to sit, try to stand. _Escape_ , she thought, naturally, but he wasn’t trying to escape now. More often when he opened his eyes he was simply _intense_ , speaking with a voice that cracked and grew hoarse with emotion as he pleaded for her forgiveness. He was never awake for very long, but each time she felt _exhausted_ by it, like they had relived their fight all over again.

She had watched him sleep, had stood and sat beside his bed when she was afraid that he would die, had accepted his tearful apologies when he woke still steeped in the milk of the poppy and whatever else they were giving him for the pain. He was weak and helpless and sorry, and she had been able to handle that. She was used to that; it brought her back to their time with the Mummers, when she was not embarrassed to care for him, because he was so insensate and not like himself at all. Or perhaps _too_ like himself, like a soft core at his center, some creature that lived inside everyone and yearned for softness despite the hard walls everyone learned to build around themselves as they aged.

But then he was awake, and she had not returned. She wondered if Tyrion had told him about her guilt and her tears and her constant presence in his room in those first days. He certainly didn’t look at her now like someone who knew how she had grieved for him. He had gone very pale, and he was standing by the desk as if a statue, frozen in time.

She took in the sight of him. He had been marvelous to look upon in his Lannister armor on the battlefield. The sun had made his hair golden again, though lately it had been darker and threaded with gray. He had seemed larger, more imposing, more _everything_. Too much. But here...

Here, he seemed small. Wasted away. He was wearing soft clothing. An invalid’s clothing. It was all too big for him, hanging off him. His shirt hung open at the collar. His hand was occupied in fixing the laces of his pants, and he had frozen in place like that.

“Brienne,” he finally said. His hair was longer than it had been when she saw him in Riverrun. His beard was trimmed neatly, but aside from that, he looked so much like the man who had walked towards her in the Harrenhal baths that she had also frozen, still in the doorway. Jaime looked her over, and she wondered what _she_ looked like to him. She had worn her full suit of armor to see him. She was carrying her sword. Gifts that he had given her but which had so recently been turned against him. Now they probably seemed turned against him once more. A barrier she had erected between them. Jaime’s fingers played restlessly over the laces as he waited for her to speak. She didn’t. She stepped fully into the room instead. She closed the door, though she hesitated before doing it. It wasn’t proper, surely, but what would it say about her expectations if she left it open? No. It was _Jaime_. Anyone would know that nothing improper would happen between them.

_Kingslayer’s whore_ , she remembered, wearily. But it was too late.

“I didn’t realize you were walking,” she said. An awkward beat. “That’s good.”

He huffed out a laugh that also sounded like a sigh of relief.

“Yes,” he said. “Tyrion has taken to bullying me out of bed for a few turns around the room a day.”

“What does the maester say?”

“I’m on the mend. He says it shouldn’t trouble me.”

“Does it…cause you pain?”

Jaime smiled at that, for some odd reason. The same sarcastic smile he always had, but there was a softness in his eyes, like there had been when they said their goodbyes in Kings Landing.

“Only a little, my lady,” he said. “I fought off the infection easily enough. Much easier than last time.”

He held up his stump, as if she needed the reminder, though when her eyes flickered to it, he put it down again, as if to hide it. His own eyes had darted away. There was a slight tinge to his cheeks. He was embarrassed. He finished with the laces on his pants, turning away. He had been embarrassed often on the road to Harrenhal, when he was at his sickest and weakest. He had been desperate for comfort and a kind touch, but he had been humiliated by his reaction every time she had given it to him. Whether it was keeping him close by at night so they wouldn’t freeze or cleaning his beard after he was sick. He would lean into the touch, his face enflamed. She’d expected him to hate her for it, she remembered. Men didn’t like when women saw them at their weakest. But it had only drawn Jaime closer, and they were friends by the time they reached Kings Landing. Friends of a sort, at least.

It struck her, quite suddenly, how foolish she had been to expect the same kind of hate now. Of _course_ he would not hate her. It seemed so obvious, watching the uncomfortable way he squirmed under her gaze. Shamed and terrified. Her gut _hurt_ , low and rumbling, the same way she felt when she realized her sword had pierced him. Conscious now of doing him some hurt she hadn’t meant to. An accidental wound that was no less dangerous than an intentional one would have been.

“I’m glad,” she said simply, and Jaime hesitated.

“I can’t say the same for myself, I’m afraid,” he said. He was looking at her like he knew this was a mistake. An injury he should not prod. But of course he did.

“So Tyrion tells me,” she replied.

It was not what he wanted to hear. The tentative amusement in his expression blinked away, and he turned his head further, to look out the window. It was obvious, to Brienne’s eyes, that he was trying to compose himself. She was more concerned than ever.

“Of course,” he said blankly. “He worries too much.”

“Too much? Or enough?”

Jaime gave an apathetic half shrug before glancing back towards her. The smile he had affixed to his face was a cruelly mocking one.

“Did you come here to see your handiwork, then?” he asked. He lifted the bottom corner of his shirt so that she could see the wound beneath. It was hideous, still. Stitched together and healing nicely by all standards, but she felt a rush of air leave her lungs to look at it. Her eyes flew to his, and he dropped the shirt. The smile was gone as quickly as he had tried to maintain it. “Brienne,” he said.

“Enough.”

“I’m sorry.”

“For mocking me? For shoving this in my face? For trying to trick me into killing you?”

“All of it. I’m sorry. I’m in a beastly mood, and I shouldn’t take it out on you. I shouldn’t have…any of it. It’s all been wrong. It isn’t your fault you’re too good.”

“What does _that_ mean?”

“Coming here, _enduring_ this because Tyrion asked you to. I loathe you both for it, just a bit. I don’t want you here out of pity or misguided loyalty.”

“Misguided loyalty? Is that what you think this is?”

“You have to admit I know a thing or two about it.”

“It’s all you know,” Brienne fired back. She couldn’t figure him out. He was restless again. He paced in front of the desk. He was limping, favoring his side. She hoped that was not permanent. She would not like to have been the cause of that. “But I’m not the same.”

“No,” Jaime agreed, vehement. “You’re nothing like me.”

They stared at each other, then. She was trying to read him. She couldn’t. He was a mystery entirely. He wanted something from her. He was waiting for it. She could see the way his eyes were big from want of it. She didn’t know what it was.

“I wasn’t staying away because I was angry,” she said.

“You should be.”

“I’m not.”

“ _Why_? I tried to trick you, as you said. I wanted to die. I knew it would hurt you, and I did it anyway, because I’m a selfish bastard. Hate me for all of those reasons.”

“I don’t.”

He seemed to swell in his anger, but it deflated quickly then, and he shoved his hand through his hair and turned away, shaking. Anger. Dread. She couldn’t tell.

“You should,” he said again. “You’re a fool for seeing anything else in me. You always have been, except at the start. You should have stayed exactly as you were. Hating me. Calling me Kingslayer.”

“Should I have let you die when the Mummers took your hand, then?”

“ _Yes_ ,” he hissed, like it was obvious. She expected to feel angry or at least annoyed with him, but she found that she wasn’t. There was a calm settling over her.

“I didn’t let you die when I half hated you still. I could never let you die now, after everything.”

“Even after this?” he pointed out. His arms were folded now across his chest.

“I saw,” she started. She wasn’t sure she knew how to say it. How to describe the look in his eyes. She couldn’t do it without being twice as flowery and at least four times as poetic as she usually liked to be, and so she swallowed back the impulse. “I know you. I know why you wanted it. I know you weren’t you at all. You would never have chosen me otherwise. Not when you knew it would…” She trailed off, watching him. _I cannot say it_ , she realized. She sighed. Jaime had limped a bit closer.

“What?” he asked. “What would it have done?”

_Destroyed me_ , Brienne thought.

“Hurt me to do you harm,” she said instead.

“I _am_ sorry,” he said. His voice was weaker than it had been. He couldn’t seem to look away from her anymore. He had the same desperate look in his eyes that he had during the fighting, and she felt _paralyzed_ by it. She hated to see it again. “I am. I didn’t know what else to do. It was selfish. I wasn’t thinking of anyone but myself. I wanted it to end. The battle. Everything.”

“You wanted me to kill you,” Brienne said. He nodded.

“Yes,” he answered, though it hadn’t been a question. He seemed to latch on to her incredulity. “I couldn’t go back. I didn’t want Cersei to win. I didn’t want the dragon queen to win. I didn’t want to be a prisoner, and I didn’t want to be a hostage to be bargained for or killed. I didn’t want to be burned alive. I wanted to die with a sword in my hand, and I wanted the most honorable woman I’ve ever met to do the honors.”

“The _honors_ ,” Brienne spat. “Even knowing…”

She shook her head again, and she could feel Jaime approaching.

“I know,” he said. “See? Selfish bastard. I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing.”

“I don’t know what else to say.”

She met his eyes and found that he looked nervous. Displaced somehow.

“I don’t need your apologies,” she managed to say. “I’ve had enough of them.”

“What _do_ you need? I’ll give it to you. Whatever I can give.”

“I want you to...” _Live? Shut up? Kiss me?_ “Stop trying to die,” she said. He laughed. A strangled sound.

“Fine,” he said.

“And if you can’t…don’t involve me again,” she said. Her voice was more strained than she would have liked. Jaime’s smile faded again to hear it.

“I won’t,” he said. “Truly, Brienne. It was selfish. I wasn’t thinking of how you might feel to do it. I wanted to die, and I wanted your sword. That was all it was.” He looked a little more at ease, though she could still sense that restlessness she had noticed when she first entered the room. “I’m sorry,” he said again. She shook her head, and he laughed quietly at her expression. “I thought you must…” This time, _he_ was the one who stopped himself from speaking.

“What?” she prodded.

“I stayed with her,” Jaime said. “After the sept.” He laughed again. It was twisted, this time. Pulled from him. “It seems mad now. I don’t know what I was…” he hung his head, and Brienne wanted badly to go to him. Touch his shoulder, his hair. An impulse never unlearned after those weeks on the road when he was feverish and prone to weeping from his loss and his illness. He had responded to her touches, and she had wanted to give them, and now it was a struggle not to return to that. Help him as she had helped him before. She wasn’t sure what he would welcome. She’d give him all of it. She clutched her pommel harder. “They call her the mad queen, but I was the mad one. I drifted. I allowed myself to drift. I stayed.” He shook his head, and he looked at her. His smile was more a sad smirk. One corner lifted up. “Surely, I thought, the most honorable woman I know has written me off as worse than useless.”

“Jaime,” Brienne sighed.

“She already drew her sword against me once. Now that I’ve proven myself to be a hypocrite as well as a sister-fucking monster…”

“Did you _really_ think…?” She wasn’t sure how to continue. “I still…” He was watching her. It was so much harder when he was looking at her. She wished she had his talent for sarcasm. Or saying exactly what she meant, but with a tone so dry it seemed false and lighter than it really was. “I don’t think any less of you,” she finally said. “I know your choices are...they are your own. I have...”

“Please don’t be _kind_ about this,” Jaime said. He grimaced and pressed his stump to his side, and Brienne startled forward immediately, surprising him. She took his arm and pulled him back towards the bed. He was amused by her efforts, she thought, until she prodded him gently to sit, and she saw the way he was looking up at her. Confused, perhaps, his brow furrowed. She had been careful with him. Perhaps that was what surprised him. People didn’t often think she was capable of tenderness. But he should know. She had cared for him on the road with the same energy.

“I wasn’t being kind,” she said to him, harsh to wrest that oddness and that expression away from him. “I meant it. You are…” a thousand words, each worse than the last, rang through her mind. “My friend,” she settled on at last. She was hardly sure that was true. “And I have seen you at your worst and best, and I don’t care for you any less for it.” His eyes glimmered, and he looked away to hide it.

“You never wrote to me,” he said. He was tired, suddenly, and he was weak as a kitten as she pulled the bedcovers up. His head rested back against the pillow. She saw a mug of some nearly-gone liquid beside his bed, and she felt relief. This conversation had seemed odd from the start, and of course it was some medicine from the healers. Slowly kicking in without her notice, and now it was laying him flat. His honesty and his vulnerability made sense with that drink inside him.

“Why would I write to you?” she asked. His maimed arm sought out her hand on the bedsheets, and he covered her fingers with it. He was looking at her searchingly.

“I wrote to _you_ ,” he said.

“You did not.”

“I did. I wrote to Sansa to ask if you were well. I thought you would write back.”

“You should have written me if you wanted to write to me. I told Sansa to answer your letter.”

“She did. And a hundred letters since. She saw it plainer than I did, I think. She’s quite smart, your lady of Winterfell. I can’t wait to meet her again. She saw it.”

“Saw what, Jaime?” Brienne asked with an indulgent smile. He smiled back. His eyelashes fluttered. He was close to asleep.

“That I love you,” he said. “She saw before I did. _You_ never saw. Neither did I, until it was too late.” Brienne had frozen. Jaime’s smile faded again. “Brienne,” he said. Brienne pulled her hand away from his. She straightened up. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…”

“You need rest, Jaime,” she said. He was watching her still. “You need rest.” Again, like it was the only thing she knew how to say. Her cheeks were flaming. _He’s not himself,_ she remembered. _He’s drugged, and Tyrion said he was behaving oddly. That’s what this is._

“Brienne,” he said again, but she was shaking her head. He didn’t try to stop her again, and so she left.

He would not remember that conversation in the morning. She was sure of it. He would not remember, and she would not mention it. She would not wonder what madness possessed him that made him speak it. It was what he thought she wanted to hear. He was desperate to make things right with her, and this was the way he had chosen to do it, his drugged brain supplying absurd solutions to the problems not so easily fixed. Yes, that was it. That was what had happened. That was all it was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Monster by Mumford and Sons
> 
> listen don't @ me for reusing a similar plot as my "wounded Jaime in Winterfell" story, because it WORKS, okay?


	44. Bran I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Starks make their case to Daenerys

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: i don't understand Bran's powers, so I should just avoid talking about them  
> also me: what if I wrote a chapter from Bran's POV
> 
> this is a short one and a bit of a filler chapter, but that seems appropriate, since I'm still stressing out about this car stuff and haven't got much time! Hopefully this weekend will be more regular, as I have a few chapters queued up that only need final edits.

It was much easier to convince the dragon queen. She was more aware of the magic of things that could not be explained than the others were.

Jon and Sansa and Arya and Robb all had _some_ awareness. Jon most of all, but even Jon had trouble understanding what Bran was saying. He still saw Bran as his brother. He still saw him as a child, too. Bran was no longer either of those things, though he understood why it was confusing to the people who had known him before.

Daenerys approached him with no such expectations, and she had a willingness to learn that felt new and unexplored in her. She had suffered a blow to her confidence in Meereen. He had seen it. She had begun to worry about her impulses and about her wants. She wanted to know that she was following the correct path. He wasn’t the first person she had approached with the aim of understanding more about herself. She sought easy answers. She sought tidy explanations. This time, at least, they would be given to her. Bran couldn’t tell her what was inside her heart, but he didn’t need to. She could understand that herself once she had chosen to do what was right.

He had seen her vision from the House of the Undying. He had seen everything, but the vision was easiest. It had been something for her eyes alone, and yet he had seen it. Retelling it to her was the simplest way of showing her the extent of his powers. It was always better to be sure that people _knew._ He had gone too far with Sansa. He had upset her with the mention of her wedding to Ramsay Bolton. But Daenerys was different. Her wedding night had been terrible, but she had loved her husband eventually, and she had good memories of him now. Bran would not make the same mistakes he had with Sansa. He was gentle and respectful when he spoke about her fear on the night of her wedding. He talked about her grief when she lost her husband and child. He talked, too, about her slow rise afterward, and how she took her fear and grief and strength and made them into power. He knew that that was something she was proud of.

Daenerys watched him while he spoke. She leaned forward in her chair. She wasn’t smiling, but she wasn’t frightened, either. Sansa looked small as she stood near the back of the room, her hands restless on her cloak as she fretted, but Daenerys didn’t get angry or accuse him of prying. She didn’t interrupt him or doubt him. She wasn’t smiling, but she was listening.

When Bran finished, Robb was nervous. He looked at Sansa for assurances that Sansa couldn’t give. Bran's indelicacy with Sansa before had made a lasting impression, and she was frightened that Daenerys would take it the same way. But Daenerys didn’t; Daenerys had not expected a reunion with a loving younger brother only to have the shock of a brutal night recalled instead. Daenerys didn’t seem to have had any expectations at all, and she met his words with an acceptance and lack of judgement that was a good sign. It was a good sign, too, that she so trusted Robb. She believed he was a good king, and she believed he was a good man, and she didn’t think that he would ever try to trick her with something like this. Bran had showed enough of his knowledge of the parts of her past that Robb would not have been able to tell him. That _no one_ would have been able to tell him.

She believed in Bran's powers. That was an important first step, but it wasn’t the only one.

She leaned back in her chair and looked thoughtfully in Robb’s direction before turning back to look at Bran. She believed him, but still she hesitated. She had lived most of her life with a single-minded purpose: return to Westeros and take the throne. It was something she had wanted for so long. Something she had been sure was her birthright. It wasn’t, not really, but only Bran and Jon and Sam and Gilly knew that for now, and Jon did not want it to be shared. Even now, he stood near the back of the room and glowered at the floor, terrified that he would have to press his claim if Daenerys refused to help.

Bran and the three eyed raven both understood how difficult it was to change course, and how difficult it was for Daenerys to postpone when she thought that victory was so close at hand. It _wasn’t_. It wouldn’t even be a victory for long if the army of the dead remained. But a victory against living men was so much easier to imagine.

This next choice that Daenerys had to make was an important one. It would inform everything that came after. It all depended on her. What kind of queen did she want to be? _Why_ did she want to be queen? What was it that drove her? He watched her as she considered. It would have been easier for her to ignore his warnings and ignore his words. It would have been easier for her to continue going after what she wanted. Maybe in a different lifetime, she would have. But she was more thoughtful than she had been when she was in Meereen, and she had learned the value of taking things like this a little slower.

“And you,” she said. She turned to Jon. Bran smiled slightly, an expression that only Sansa caught. She trusted him too, more than the others did. He hadn’t meant to upset her, but it had helped. She knew exactly what he was. She smiled back at him, relieved that he seemed content. Daenerys was watching Jon curiously. “My nephew. You say you’ve seen this night king?”

“I have.” Jon’s voice was grim and gravel-laced. His words were plain and unadorned with anything but the truth. He spoke of the wildlings and of Hardhome. He spoke of the Others, and of waking in the night and fighting one in the Lord Commander’s chambers. He spoke of everything he had seen. Jon wasn’t a natural speaker, but he was honest, and he was good-hearted, and Daenerys would see that.

When she looked to Bran to speak of his own experiences, he spoke of the three eyed raven. He spoke of the night king. He spoke of the centuries they had spent at odds, and the three-eyed raven’s attempt to keep the endless winter at bay for as long it could. Daenerys listened.

She listened when Sansa talked about their stores and how little they could afford a long winter, especially if they were going to be fighting a war on their own. She listened to Arya when Arya ran through all the minor northern houses that had sworn to send people to help the Starks defend the realm, and how many fighting men each house could promise. Robb hardly spoke, but Daenerys looked to him often, to see what his mood was, or to see if he agreed.

She absorbed all of the information with a smooth mask of an expression. It was the same expression Sansa wore when she was speaking to the northern lords. It was similar to Jon’s when he spoke to Sansa. Bran watched Daenerys, and he knew of a hundred other times she had been forced to make choices for the good of the realm, whether she realized it or no. The boy who had been Bran Stark admired her for her strength. He thought her beautiful and stern and frightening, but she made him _sad_ instead of afraid. The three eyed raven thought she seemed impossibly young, and impossibly burdened.

She looked again at Jon, and her eyes took in his, and his hair, and the broad set of his shoulders. He looked nothing like the Targaryen nephew she had imagined since Robb revealed his existence to her. He looked like a Stark, but he was her family all the same. That made the Starks her family, too. She’d never had a family before, and Bran knew that family would be her weakness now. She smiled at Jon. It was a tired smile, and Bran knew exactly what it meant. She would help. She would choose correctly.

“You don’t have the Targaryen look,” she said. “I imagine that made it easier for Ned Stark to hide you.”

“It’s the Stark look,” Arya said with some pride. “Jon and I are the only ones who had it. The rest of them are all Tully.”

Sansa and Robb both smiled a little. Bran smiled too, because he could remember. Arya had always been proud of that.

“I’m a Snow,” Jon said. He was smiling at Arya too, but he was uncomfortable with the scrutiny, and he was uncomfortable that he had been called upon to speak yet again. He had hoped to fade into the background. “But I’ve always been a Stark. I’ll always be a Stark. They raised me.” He looked at Daenerys with a nervousness that also looked like apology. Bran saw that Sansa was tuned to it. She stood up straighter, like she meant to defend him if she needed to. Robb’s brow creased, too. They were all aware of Jon's nervousness, though they didn’t know anything of the book and what Bran had seen in his vision of a wedding by the water. Sansa saw danger and Robb saw discord. Only Arya remained still, but Bran knew that was because she had been ready to pounce from the moment this conversation started. “I knew a Targaryen,” Jon continued. “Maester Aemon, at the wall. He was a good man. I liked him a lot. I wish I had known, then. He said that a Targaryen alone in the world is a terrible thing.” Bran knew Jon didn’t really believe that. Bran understood that Jon was reaching out for the connection because he knew that it was important, and because he knew that it was what she wanted to hear. Daenerys would be more inclined to help them if she thought there was something to be shared.

It wasn’t necessary. But it wouldn’t hurt. Bran allowed it to continue.

“I thought I was the last, after my brother died,” Daenerys said. Her eyes glimmered. She looked at Jon with real hope. “I thought I was the only one. I made my dragons my children and my people into my family. My fathers and mothers and grandparents. My nieces and nephews. They were all I had. I was their mother and daughter and sister.”

“Then we’re both fighting for our families,” Jon said smoothly. He smiled at her. Small and contained, but true. Jon did not need another family, but he was glad to find that Daenerys wanted him for hers.

Glad because it was something he never felt he had, yes. But glad because it would serve their goal, too. Jon, more than any of the others, understood exactly what was at stake.

* * *

After, Sansa lingered when the rest of them left the room. She sat before him, in the chair Daenerys had claimed before. Daenerys and Jon were retreating to speak more about what Jon had seen at Hardhome. Robb and Arya were eager for the chance of a private conversation. Sansa was blank. Uneager for anything but rest. Bran saw her nervousness in the way she grasped at her skirts and the way she hid herself away from everyone else. She was terrified. He was sorry for that.

“You should speak to Robb,” he said.

“I will,” she replied. Her voice was very tense. She was angry, too. More fear than anger, but anger all the same. Bran understood her fears, because they were so easy to connect to her past. He had seen Robb choosing to disinherit her. He had seen Robb choosing to leave her in Kings Landing and keep Jaime Lannister as a prisoner. He had seen Robb choosing to marry the woman he loved and losing the war for it. He had seen all the times Sansa swallowed back her anger or her resentment because she wanted to be glad in an uncomplicated way that Robb was back. But she _couldn’t_ be. She wasn’t. She was too betrayed for that.

“You want to ask me if it worked,” he knew. Sansa nodded.

“Will she help us?” she asked.

“She will.”

“Will she turn against us?”

Bran tilted his head, to look at her more closely. Her face was very pale, and it did not move. Even though she knew it was fruitless to hide things from both he and Arya, she did it anyway. It had become habit to protect herself, and Bran knew that it would be a while yet before she could stop doing it. She and Daenerys were alike in their ability to pretend, though they shared little else. They had learned to hide their true feelings behind false faces, but Sansa was cold and steady while Daenerys was warm and varied. They had learned to value different things as they grew and were melded into the women they had become. Still, they shared some things, and there would be some sympathies between them, as long as everything went well.

“I can’t answer that,” he admitted. “You don’t trust her.”

“I don’t trust anybody.”

“You trust Jon.”

Sansa breathed in sharply, and this time he saw the fear on her face for what it was. She thought that he meant to judge her, or taunt her, or use her emotions against her. Of course she did; all she had known since she left Winterfell was people doing just that. Cersei Lannister and Littlefinger and even the Tyrells, who were always kind to her with their reasons hidden behind syrupy politeness. Sansa kept herself locked away for a reason, and she was terrified of being exposed.

“You trust me,” he continued.

“You’re my brother,” she said.

“You don’t trust Robb.”

Her expression wavered at last. It crumpled slightly, like a piece of parchment. She looked down at her hands.

“I want to,” she answered, in a voice that was nearly a whisper. “But he’s made mistakes before. And this is our _home_. This is our _family_. I have to be sure.”

“You need to speak with him.”

“I know I do.”

“You will feel better when you do.”

She looked at him, and he knew she was trying to see if he was speaking as Bran or as the three eyed raven. They would never stop looking for their brother in him. He knew that, too.

“Is he making another mistake?” she asked. Her voice was very small. Young. Even _Bran_ thought she sounded young.

“I can’t tell you that,” he answered. “But you should talk to him.”

Sansa nodded, and she stood up. She bent down to kiss him on the forehead, as she often did. Bran smiled up at her.

“We will be safe here,” he said. “I promise.”

She faltered, and he could tell that she wanted to say that he couldn’t promise that. But Sansa, like the others, didn’t completely understand the extent of his powers, and so she didn’t challenge him. He _couldn’t_ promise it, of course. It didn’t work like that. But it would make her feel better. And Bran the boy wanted her to feel better, even if the three eyed raven part of him didn’t care. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is You Won't Find Me by Narrow Skies


	45. Jon VI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robb and Sansa speak about Daenerys, and Jon mediates

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I can't say this chapter will bring everyone the closure they're looking for, but hopefully it's a step! We're in it for the long haul folks.

He could hear their voices behind the door to the solar as he made his approach. Sometimes he forgot the way Sansa could make her angriest words seem like they were pleasant conversation, and so he was somehow surprised, when he entered the room, to see them standing up and squaring off across the desk. Sansa’s hands were spread, palms against the wood as she leaned in to make her point. Robb’s arms were folded across his chest, and he stood defensively, a few steps back from the desk. It was obvious just from their body language what they were talking about. 

“Give me a _little_ credit, at least,” Sansa was saying as Jon opened the door. She glanced at him to ensure that it _was_ him, and he saw the relief that flickered across her face before she turned back to Robb, lowering her voice even further. Jon felt a bit sick with the realization: they had avoided this moment and had avoided this conversation for as long as they could, apparently, and now he would have to stand against one of them. Would he sympathize with Robb or chastise him with Sansa? Was it even possible to do both? “I’m not a complete idiot. Of course I noticed.”

“Sansa, there’s nothing _to_ notice,” Robb promised softly. He sat down in his chair with a weary sigh, apparently feeling safer with Jon in the room, but Sansa remained standing. Jon saw the way her fingers were just slightly curved, her fingernails digging into the wood, and he recognized that she was far more upset than she was letting on. Sansa was good at pretending, but he understood: she only had so much energy to devote to keeping her mask in place. At Castle Black, it had slipped often, her exhaustion making her open, and making it so much easier to see when she was fearful and hopeful and angry. She had built up her strength in the moons safe at Winterfell, but she still sometimes slipped, and she was slipping now. She had seemed off-balanced all day, worrying about Daenerys and then meeting Daenerys and then watching as Bran convinced Daenerys that she would be needed against the dead, and now it was all beginning to crumble.

“What’s wrong?” Jon asked, though he knew very well what the conversation was about. Robb sighed and indicated that Sansa should answer.

“Close the door,” she said. He did. “He’s…” Her anger faded slightly. She contained it, pushed it back down. She sighed. She sat in the chair in front of her. It was the same place she’d sat when Robb told them all that Jon wasn’t their brother. Robb was in his same seat too. Jon had a frivolous moment of hoping that _this_ conversation didn’t do as much to sever his family ties as _that_ one did. Sansa’s voice tempered itself, biting back on the initial anger. “I’m concerned about Daenerys,” she said. An opening volley. _I’m concerned about Robb and Daenerys_ was in every gesture, every word. Robb knew it, too. His shoulders were hunched miserably as he leaned back in his chair, trying to look casual and not horribly guilty.

“She _does_ have three dragons,” Jon pointed out. He sat in the chair beside Sansa’s. He wasn’t used to being the one trying to lighten the mood. He wasn’t sure he was entirely successful. “We _should_ be concerned.”

Jon liked his aunt, at least so far. He respected her for her youth and for her rise to power. He felt a kinship with her that went beyond their literal kinship and was based more on the fact that they both had spent their childhoods largely alone, forging a family where they could because their family wasn’t available to them. Jon at least had had the benefit of an upbringing in a castle, with a family that mostly loved him and at worst tolerated his presence. Daenerys never had that, and he admired her for the strength that she cultivated to help her survive such a difficult childhood.

He liked her, but there were things that made him nervous about her, too. The way she spoke of their shared Targaryen blood. The way she spoke of the future, as if it was a guaranteed thing that he would choose to be named Targaryen and choose to help her restore the glory of their house—whatever _that_ meant. He would not challenge her or question her or push back against her until after the fight against the dead, since he thought it deeply unlikely that he would even survive long enough to _worry_ about the future, but he _was_ cautious.

After meeting with Bran, Jon was slightly more cheered about her goodness; he felt sure that she would choose to fight with them for the living. Appealing to their family connection, he thought, had been the right choice, and he wanted to strengthen it. He spent the better part of an hour after leaving Bran in speaking with her, as they stood out in the field with her dragons. He hadn’t, even once, stopped feeling terrified of them. The dragons had eyed him with what seemed to be a mingling of curiosity and ambivalence that Daenerys claimed was _adorable_ , and though they had not done anything overtly threatening, Jon could not see them as anything but.

He had smiled at the right places. Interjected with stories of his own in their conversation. He spoke of his death and rebirth, and of the Red Woman who saw his importance in the flames, because though most days he thought her a mummer’s farce, he knew that Daenerys would like to hear it. He was right; she had shared her own story of walking into her husband’s funeral pyre and emerging unburnt. It pleased her to think that they were alike in their ability to cheat death. She spoke of destiny in the same certain way that she spoke of birthright. Like a woman who had never had any doubts that she was meant to be important.

Jon could understand how someone might fall for a woman as intense and commanding as Daenerys. Even when she was telling pleasant stories, she spoke with a focus that made her every word seem impossibly important. Not quite in the same way Sansa’s whole focus on him made him feel like he was blooming under her attention, but close to it. Determination. Assurance. She wasn’t quite what he would have imagined a Targaryen to be, and yet she was, at the same time, exactly what he had expected.

He could understand Robb, if Robb _had_ fallen. Jon was well versed by now in falling for a person you knew you shouldn’t fall for, and in the guilt and the shame that came with it. He also understood that the guilt and the shame weren’t always enough to make those feelings disappear. Hells, he even understood thinking that the person you loved was the only person who would ever matter, only to find a second love when you were very much not looking for it.

He understood. He understood every part of it. And yet…

Well. Understanding was one thing. He understood that Robb had loved Talisa. He understood that it must have been difficult for Robb to live through his losses. But there were things he would never understand. Robb’s choice to break the alliance and marry Talisa was chief among them.

No two situations were exactly the same, of course. No two lives. But it was _impossible_ not to think of Robb’s choice and to think of his own. He had loved Ygritte. Not as well as he might have liked, but he _did_ love her. And when the time came to choose…

Jon had chosen his duty. His honor. He had chosen to do what he believed to be the _right_ thing, above all else. It wasn’t just his vows. It wasn’t just because it was what he had been charged to do. It was _right_ , it was the thing he knew he _had_ to do, even if it meant standing against the woman he loved.

Robb, though. Robb had chosen differently.

Jon knew that it was impossible to understand the consequences of a choice sometimes until after the choice had been made. And it was so much easier to look at something from the outside and make a judgement. Robb was his brother. Robb would _always_ be his brother, and Jon would always _love_ Robb, but he could not understand or respect the choices that Robb had made.

Jon knew that it wasn’t a choice, to feel things for someone you shouldn’t. Out of anyone, of _course_ Jon understood that. He couldn’t blame Robb for whatever growing feelings there were for Daenerys. It also didn’t feel the same at all, and he knew that Robb would never make the same mistakes he had made before. Robb’s mistake had not been in loving. Robb’s mistake had been in _choosing_ that love above his family, and he was not the sort of man who would be able to live with making that mistake a second time. Whatever madness had taken hold of him that made him marry Talisa, Jon saw none of it now in the careful, restrained way that Robb regarded the dragon queen.

It was also easy, though, to understand Sansa. Her fears and her anger and the desperate way she was looking between Jon and Robb now. Sansa had suffered more than anyone for Robb’s choices. They had all suffered in their way, but…Robb’s choices had been directly painful for her. They had been directly responsible for some of the worst things that had happened to her, and she couldn’t trust Robb the way she trusted Jon. That sick, jealous creature that lived somewhere inside Jon was even quietly glad for that, to know that he would not be supplanted in her affections so long as he continued to choose their family first, but it was muted and weak beneath the turmoil he felt at the thought of Sansa and Robb at odds.

The truth was that this confrontation had always been coming. From the moment Robb returned, it had simmered beneath their every interaction, and it was only timing that kept it from exploding before Robb again had to leave for Dragonstone. And then it was just _worry_ that kept Sansa from being angry. Worry for Robb and worry for all of them. With Robb gone, there was Littlefinger to contend with, and winter to prepare for, and Winterfell to run. But Robb was back now to be angry at, and he was back with a beautiful woman on his arm, and it was only Sansa’s awareness of the importance of this alliance that had kept her from expressing her anger before they could take the time to have this conversation alone.

“Sansa thinks I’ve fallen in love with Daenerys,” Robb elaborated. “And that I’m going to give her my crown because of it.”

“It’s a valid concern,” Sansa snapped. “You did it before. You lost our _home_ once for love. You chose a woman you barely knew over the safety of your sisters, and you chose to _marry_ her against the alliance that mother made for you.” Robb flinched. Normally such a visible sign of his discomfort would temper Sansa, but it didn’t today. “And now you have left in the middle of negotiations and flown off on a _dragon_ with Daenerys. A beautiful woman who you clearly have some fondness for. You brought no other guard. You stayed overnight at a holdfast where none of her people or _your_ people were there to witness. Anything could have happened.”

“Do you really think that of me?” Robb asked.

“I _have_ to,” Sansa answered. Her voice wasn’t as cold as it had been. It wavered, just slightly. Sansa was almost frighteningly competent when it came to dealing with their people, but Jon knew it was harder for her to be cold with Robb, even when she believed he deserved it. He recognized his own reluctance to be firm with Arya, when she was talking about wearing Littlefinger’s face and he was trying to still see her and _treat_ her as the little sister she had been before they were parted. It was difficult sometimes when siblings were involved. There was an amount of unconditional love and unconditional acceptance in that kind of relationship, and there was a reluctance to risk losing it. And Sansa had become so practical. It had become second nature for her to dismiss the terrible things that had been done to her, because it was easier for her to convince herself that they had been necessary, or they had been strengthening, because otherwise they would just be terrible, and he knew she didn’t want to think of it like that.

And Robb had been thought dead to them for so long. Sansa had wanted him back, and now she wanted things to be good and easy and the same as they used to be between them. Jon knew it, because he wanted the same things. He wanted to trust his brother. He wanted to believe that Robb would make the right choices this time. But Jon didn’t trust in the same way he used to; trust had become something _earned_ , rather than something given freely, even to his siblings. He had learned too many difficult lessons.

Maybe part of the problem was that they had never talked about her. Jon had always been too afraid to ask, and he assumed that the same was true for Sansa. Or maybe Sansa had simply been too _angry_ to ask.

Robb’s wife. Robb’s murdered wife. The poor choice he had made. Talisa. She must have been something special to make _Robb_ abandon his honor and his alliance. Maybe it was unfair to think that Robb would lose his head again just because Daenerys was beautiful and personable, but what else were they to think? They had no idea how or why Talisa had won Robb’s heart. They had no idea why _Robb_ , of all people, made such a stunningly bad choice after proving himself on the battlefield. Jon was sure that Robb wouldn’t make the same mistakes again, but how sure was _sure_? Sure enough to risk their home? Sure enough to risk his family’s safety?

“I admire her,” Robb admitted. He met Sansa’s eyes. His expression held a combination of earnestness and hope and regret, and it was difficult to look at. So much sincerity often was, especially met as it was by Sansa’s rigid disappointment. “It didn’t start that way. I was defensive, and her people advised her poorly. But we found common ground. It’s easy to talk to her. We have the same pressures on us. We understand each other. We both came into power young, and we both have had our failures. She’s good to talk to, and I’m glad I know her. That isn’t love. And even if it _was…_ I’m not the boy I was, and I won’t make the same choices. The safety of my family, _your_ safety, it’s my top priority in all of this. I have thought of little else while at Dragonstone. You don’t have to fear.”

Sansa opened her mouth as if she wanted to argue, but she also looked _stricken_. Like something had frightened her in Robb’s speech. Jon had his own concerns; Robb’s description sounded an awful lot like love, especially in the tone he used.

“It would be a good alliance,” Jon blurted. Robb and Sansa both looked at him, eyebrows raised in a distinctly Tully look that made him even more uncomfortable. He hadn’t meant to speak, really, and now he found himself having to clear his throat and continue, as if he wasn’t embarrassed. As if he hadn’t spoken chiefly to make that haunted, terrified expression leave Sansa’s face “It wouldn’t be like the last time. If he _did_ fall for her. If he _did_ marry her. It would be a good alliance. It wouldn’t go _against_ one.” He sent an apologetic look in Robb’s direction, but Robb shook his head and shrugged it off.

“He’s right,” he said. “Even _if_ , Sansa. It wouldn’t be the same. ”

“She comes with an army and three dragons,” Jon continued. “She seems like to work with us to fight the dead, but I don’t know what that would mean if there were no plans for a further alliance. A nephew she doesn’t know can only go so far to securing her loyalty. A marriage alliance would give us options. It’s something that we should at least discuss. You’re the one who taught me that, you know.” Sansa’s eyes were sharp on his. “Look at every possible way until we make a choice, right? This time, we’d be doing that. _Together_. No one’s going to make a choice without the others, just like we promised Lady Mormont.”

Robb's lips were pressed in a thin line. Jon feared that perhaps he was angry to hear his wife dismissed as a problem he solved incorrectly, but he nodded in thanks when Jon’s eyes met his. He was shaken, Jon could tell. He looked like he had been dealt a blow, same as Sansa. There was still so much unsaid. Still so much tension between them. The immediate danger had passed, and Jon could feel pride for having been the one to avert the catastrophe, though mostly he just felt _exhausted_. In childhood, their problems and disagreements had such easy solutions. But this was the kind of thing that would never leave Robb and Sansa. It was a wound that would never heal correctly. A scar they would both bear for the rest of their lives. There would never be a way to remove Sansa’s fear beyond all doubt, just as there would never be a way to remove Robb’s guilt. There was only surviving it. Living with it.

Sansa frowned as she considered Jon’s words. Her hands were restless in her lap, her fingers twisting together and then apart again. She smoothed her skirt over her legs. Jon watched the war on her face. Anger and rationality. Hurt and consideration. She had an ability to see past her own wants to the things that were necessary, but there would always be a part of her that resented being asked to risk giving up her happiness or her safety, especially since it was so hard won. He wished he could fix it, but it wasn’t the sort of thing that _could_ be fixed. Not yet, not in the world in which they lived.

Sansa stood, and she paced to the fire. Robb looked at Jon, and Jon shook his head. They needed to wait for Sansa’s reaction. Finally, she sighed, and she turned to face them.

“If we align with her,” she said. “Whether it’s a marriage or not, she’s going make you give up your crown.” Robb’s expression was somehow both apologetic and non-committal. Sansa’s expression was difficult to read. “Which would mean giving up our independence.”

Robb sighed, and he scrubbed a hand through his hair, making his tousled curls even more unruly. Sansa’s eyebrows drew together as she watched, revealing her anxiety. She was hoping that Robb would tell her some easy solution that she hadn’t yet thought of, but Jon knew he wouldn’t. He could read Robb’s thoughts so clearly.

The north was just too big. If they brought more of an army to aid her, or if Daenerys was more desperate, maybe they’d have a chance at retaining their independence. It would be a better position to bargain from, at least. But in truth _they_ needed _her_ more than _she_ needed them. The power was all hers. She could demand the north and burn Winterfell to the ground with her dragons, but she didn’t even need to do _that_. The Night King would take care of them well enough if she refused to help. Perhaps _she_ would fall to the army of the dead as well, but the north would fall first. Jon could see how it would be better to give up the crown peacefully and stand a chance at surviving. The northern people were stubborn, occasionally to a fault. But they would understand _this_. Dragons were a different breed of warfare, and the dead were already going to be next-to-impossible to beat. The northern lords wanted to retain their independence, but at the cost of their lives?

“The north declared independence because of an illegitimate king,” Jon said slowly. “Because Joffrey was a monster, and because he beheaded your father.” Sansa met his eyes, hearing the fury in his voice. The furrow was gone from between her brows. “If there’s a good queen on the throne. A legitimate queen. Even if Robb _doesn’t_ marry her...maybe she’s a queen worth serving, and maybe we don’t have to risk another war to stand against her.”

The expression on Sansa’s face was briefly heartbroken. She _was_ heartbroken. He wished that he had the right words to make it better, but he could only look at her helplessly and will her to understand.

“I need you to be sure, Robb,” she said. Her voice was hoarse. “I need you to be _sure_ she will be a good queen before you bend the knee.”

“Of course, Sansa,” Robb said, scrambling to answer, scrambling to make that expression on her face go away. “I haven’t promised her anything except to help her take Cersei from the throne. And she will help us against the dead. Bran’s sure of it. That’s what matters now. Everything else…that has to wait for after. But Jon’s right. Daenerys isn’t Joffrey. She’ll be a just queen. I’m sure of _that_.”

Sansa nodded. She still didn’t seem thrilled. Robb stood, and he came around the desk to pull her into a hug, but Sansa resisted being pulled, evading his touch, crossing her arms over her chest.

“I will protect us,” Robb said. His voice was firm. “I will protect you.”

“You didn’t, before. I won’t be married again to some monster.”

“You won’t,” Robb promised. _His_ expression was heartbroken too. “You won’t. I swear it. Whatever negotiation there is, it will include that. You won’t have to marry anyone you don’t choose.”

“And if I never choose?” Sansa asked. Cagey, hands clutching at her arms. Jon’s stomach hurt to see her so wounded.

“Then you won’t ever marry,” Robb promised, and Sansa breathed again, the breath shuddering out of her. She nodded, and Robb approached her again. Gentler than last time. This time, when he tugged on her arm, she let herself be pulled into a hug. It wasn’t forgiveness, Jon knew, but it was a start. She trusted Robb at least enough to follow through on that promise. “I know you can’t believe me, but I will prove it to you. My family comes first. _You_ come first. I failed you before, but I won’t fail you again.”

He pulled away to look her in the eye, and she nodded. She still looked doubtful, and afraid, to Jon’s eyes, but she was holding it back. She smiled, but it shook. Jon wondered that Robb couldn’t see it. He wondered that he _could_. He never used to be so adept at reading people, but Sansa was so easy to see right now.

Robb left, but Jon stayed. He waited for Sansa to speak, because he knew she would. She was still standing, and she gazed into the fire. He wondered if she even realized that he was still in the room with her. It was a strangely empty feeling, to still wonder about that.

But then she turned and looked at him. Her eyes were glassy, and he stood immediately. He went to her. He hugged her. Much the same as Robb had done. He had to remind himself of that. It would have been strange if he _hadn’t_ hugged her.

“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“I want to trust him,” she said.

“I know.”

“I want to believe him.”

“I know you do.”

They stood like that for a while, until finally she pulled away, and she looked at him with a sad smile.

“I thought we would be safe,” she said. “As long as we were allowed to govern ourselves. I thought that was what we were fighting for.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again, but she shook her head. She sat down in her chair, and he remained standing beside her.

“No,” she said. “You were right. The north doesn’t have the resources to fight another queen, especially not _her_. It’s better to get on her good side now and be rewarded rather than risk her wrath later. Still. A Targaryen on the throne. It’s a big act of trust.”

“Trusting her? Or trusting Robb to know her?”

“Both,” Sansa admitted. “We know nothing about her. We know what she’s been through, but not what it has made of her. It’s so easy to be twisted by the terrible things that are done to us. She might not have been, but _I_ almost was.” She looked at him, and he saw the hopelessness in her gaze.

“You weren’t,” he told her.

“No. I wasn’t. But that won’t do anything to protect me if _she_ was.”

“I’m here,” he reminded her. “And I’m going to protect you. I told you.”

“And I told _you_ that that wasn’t possible. _Jon_...”

“Sansa,” he responded, in the same testy tone, and she finally laughed at him. It was tired. Exhausted.

“She’s beautiful,” she said. He opened his mouth to— _to what, Jon? Reassure her that she’s beautiful, too?_ Sansa continued with, “she’s beautiful, and she’s kind, and she did a clever thing in reaching out to all of us to make sure that we felt that we all felt _seen_ by her. I want to believe her, Jon. I do. I don’t want to sound so horrible and jealous of her. But it would be a good strategy to be so kind. It would be a good way to disarm us. We don’t _know_ her. I want to believe that Robb isn’t just falling for a pretty face and the lure of, I don’t know, dragons? But he lost sight of things before.”

“I know he did,” Jon sighed. “I know.”

“He refused to trade Jaime Lannister for me and Arya,” Sansa said. She was holding herself very straight in her seat now. Her hands were clasped together. He knew that that meant that she was saying something that she was afraid to say. He didn’t move. He hardly felt like he was breathing. “It would have been bad strategy,” she said. “He was right. It took me a long time to decide that, but he was right. I understand why he made the choice to keep Jaime instead of trading him back. Jaime was too valuable a prisoner. More valuable than me. I understand why my mother made the choice _she_ made, too, but…I understand Robb for what he did.” She took in a sharp breath, and she looked down at her hands again. “But then he fell in love. And he broke a vow. And he lost the war.” She laughed bitterly, and finally she looked up at Jon. “That was bad strategy too,” she said. Her voice was small, and choked with tears. “But _she_ was worth risking the war for, and I wasn’t.”

“Sansa,” Jon said, and he could not stop himself from going to one knee beside her chair so that he could pull her into another hug. She bent over him, and he was almost relieved when she began to shake and sob. She didn’t like to cry in front of him. He didn’t think she liked to cry in front of anyone. But this was what she needed. She had cried like this the first night she was with him at the wall. She’d woken in the night, gasping awake in the bed he had given her. He had fallen asleep in a chair by the fire, but he’d woken at the sound of her distress. She had been so relieved at the sight of him and so frightened from her dream that she had begun to sob, and he hadn’t known what to do. Holding her seemed like it would be a mistake, and he had almost gone for Brienne, but in the end, he had offered her the embrace, and she had taken it gratefully.

“I’m sorry,” she said now, finally, as her tears dried, but he only held her tighter and shook his head.

“Don’t be. It’s all right.”

“I thought I was past it, but I’m not. I can’t stop thinking about it. He makes all these promises, and he always knows exactly what to _say,_ but…I used to think that he would protect me. He always made me feel safe when I was with him. But he left me to die in Kings Landing, and he lost the war for a woman he’d only barely met. I know it’s not…it’s not the same. I know this might be different. I know that it would be a good alliance if he _did_ marry her, this time, but…”

“You don’t need to explain it, Sansa,” Jon said gently. “I understand.”

She nodded, and she rested her forehead down on his shoulder. The sigh she released then was weary, heartbroken, and it broke his heart, too.

“I thought it would be different,” she said. “I thought we would all just be here together. Forever. None of us ever growing old or leaving. I’m still a stupid little girl.”

“You aren’t,” he said.

“I am. Something like this was always going to happen.”

“I’m still here,” he reminded her. His heart was beating traitorously fast. Yes, he was still here. It was difficult to say what could compel him to leave Winterfell now. Not much. “I’ll keep you from harm, Sansa. I swear it.”

“Until you leave, too,” Sansa said. She pulled back to look at him. Her hands were still on his shoulders. She squeezed them gently, as if to apologize for her words. Had his incredulity shown so obviously on his face?

“Leave?” he asked. “Why would I leave?”

“Why does anyone?” Sansa asked. She pulled her hands away, but he took them in his own. He held them firmly.

“I’m not going to leave you,” he said. His eyes were on hers. Intense. Too much. He could tell. But she didn’t look away. Not immediately. She stared at him, her eyes open wide. She opened her mouth, then shook her head.

“You can’t promise that,” she said. “And you don’t need to. I was just being…”

“I have no desire to be anywhere but here,” he promised her. He wondered if her eyes were so wide because she saw too much, or if perhaps it was just that his words were so vehement. He could not tell. “This is my home. You are my family. We're stronger together. I know it can’t last forever. I know there must be changes. But I’d keep it just like this, if I could. I swear it. I would.” He wished she understood how dark and empty it all had been until she had come to him and dragged him back from the edge. “Northern independence, the battle of the bastards. Everything men have been praising me for moons now. It was all for you. For Winterfell. For the Starks. For _you_. I know I don’t often know how to say the words. Maybe I should get better at that. But I swear to you. I will protect you, and I won’t leave you.” He held her gaze, and she was gaping at him openly now. She looked at him like…like he was Symeon Star-Eyes, or Aemon the Dragonknight. Like he was the storied knight that she had been waiting for.

_No_ , he remembered. _That was Brienne. And Brienne already saved her. All you are is the cousin who wants too much._

But she was looking at him so openly, and the horrible little voice inside his head that always told him to shut up and leave her alone was silent. 

“Jon,” she said quietly. He smiled at her. She hugged him desperately, with all her strength.

He wrapped his arms around her, and he continued to want. But that was not more important than this. What that broken part of him wanted would never be more important than the simple fact of her happiness, and the simple fact that she _was_ his family, no matter what else he was. Family had always been so important to him, and he would do anything to make sure she knew it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song for this chapter is Crow by Sasha Siem
> 
> between people wanting the north to stay independent and people thinking the idea of northern independence is stupid, i truly have no idea how the arguments stated in this chapter are going to be received, so let me just remind all of you that this story is already written and that I'm just a big dummy who can't fix much at this point lmao


	46. Tyrion II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tyrion and Jaime discuss Jaime's disastrous love confession, among other things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my car issues are finally all worked out (I mean, HOPEFULLY. if a new transmission isn't enough to fix it, I might lose my shit entirely), so I have time to actually work on this story today! 
> 
> My attempts to catch up on replying to comments seem doomed to fail, and there's a part of me that's just exhausted by the thought of it, mostly because I don't know what to say when people argue with my story choices or are particularly passionate about an element of the story that I'm not very invested in. And yet I continue to truck along! I am already more than 20 days behind, so if you receive a confusing reply from me that has nothing to do with a more recent comment you left, it's probably from like...15 chapters ago! 
> 
> I'm much quicker to respond on tumblr, at angel-deux-writes, so hit me up there if you want!

Tyrion had already been in a particularly terrible mood—a reasonable reaction, he thought, to the disappearance of his _Targaryen_ queen with a _Stark_ would-be king—but Jaime’s despondency was making it worse.

They had both received ravens from Sansa Stark only that morning. Tyrion had no _idea_ what Jaime’s could have said, but his own had been illuminating. Daenerys and Robb had arrived safely at Winterfell. Daenerys was enjoying her stay in the north, and had been accepted happily by the entire Stark family. She had enclosed her own small note, in which she had promised that she and Robb would return in several days, after she had explored some more of the north with him.

_I assume you’ve already come up with some clever explanation as to where we are._

Yes, so very clever. Tyrion Lannister, the cleverest imp in the realm, who fought his way into this thankless position of Hand _twice_ and both times suffered under the whims of impulsive monarchs.

So it was bad enough without Jaime and his sullen silence and his mournful sighs and the particularly handsome way he gazed out the window in some sort of love-struck agony, making all the servant girls swoon over him and giggle about him in the hallways more than they already had.

“I fucking hate you,” Tyrion said.

 _That_ got his brother’s attention at least. Jaime turned to look at Tyrion, his brow furrowing attractively.

“You don’t,” he said. “Or you wouldn’t spend so much time lurking in my room, ensuring I’m not slipping into another “state”, as you keep calling it.”

“I do,” Tyrion griped. He took a healthy gulp of wine, and he ignored the way that Jaime’s mouth tightened at the corners when he did it. If Jaime could try to commit suicide by running afoul of that great beast of his, Tyrion could kill himself slowly in drinking. “Things are complicated enough. You’re an added burden.”

“You could have just let me die,” Jaime pointed out blithely.

“And see? This is why I fucking hate you,” Tyrion continued. “Because you can’t even let me hate you properly. You have to be too pathetic to hate! And all the servant girls won’t shut _up_ about you. I forgot what it’s like living with you. It’s endless.”

“How do you think _I_ feel? What man needs four sponge baths a day? They keep _offering_.”

“You aren’t getting less hate-able,” Tyrion grumbled. “It’s so much worse when you complain about it. Your gifts are wasted on you.”

“My gifts? I’m an old, crippled, sister-fucking…”

“Gods, is it time for my nap already? Wake me when you’ve reached the end of your list.”

“You’re not exactly an easy person to love right now yourself,” Jaime snorted. He went back to looking out the window. His hair was perfectly tousled, the bastard.

“Yes, well. It’s been a bit hectic.”

“Apparently. Sansa says the boy’s still alive, so your queen may not be her father after all. Remains to be seen how much she’s like her brother.”

“Except this would be a beneficial alliance, not a colossal fucking mistake,” Tyrion muttered. He poured himself another glass. Jaime sighed like an old septa. “Oh, don’t start.”

“I hate it when you get like this. You remind me of _her_.”

The goblet was halfway to his lips when Jaime said the words, and Tyrion cringed and lowered it.

“Fine,” he said. He pushed it idly to the side as if Jaime’s words hadn’t shaken him. Jaime had so rarely spoken of Cersei since waking at Highgarden. He had spoken of her haltingly at first, as if he had needed to. He had apologized for fighting for her for so long. It obviously bothered him, and it had obviously been important for him to try and make Cersei’s ghost between he and Tyrion at least a little faded. But he had avoided mentioning her since, and Tyrion had assumed…well.

It wasn’t actually much of an assumption. It was just _knowing._ Jaime’s relationship with their sister had always been tempestuous. Even growing up, even when they were inseparable, there had been times when Jaime was furious with her. He would swear he was finished with her, but he never had been. That wasn’t how Jaime loved. It was how _Cersei_ loved: with conditions, with terms that needed to be met. For Jaime, love was much simpler. It was devotion. Near worship. It withstood everything. Jaime loved Cersei the way a dying man loved water. Always, fully, with more abandon than most men ever felt for anything. He was a singular man, Jaime. That wasn’t always a good thing. Tyrion had found a certain pride in being odd, but Jaime’s pride was different. He was proud of his loyalty to such a monstrous woman. He was proud of his knighthood, though he had done little enough with it over the years. He was proud of cuckolding the king, probably. But pride was nothing against what Cersei wanted. He would give her anything, no matter how weak it made him.

This separation seemed doomed to end as all the others had: with Jaime giving up, giving in, and crawling back to her. What else could Jaime do? Loving Cersei had been his entire life, and he was a man made for loving.

But through all these weeks of slow recovery at Highgarden, he hadn’t spoken of her since the beginning. He had not asked about her. He had not written to her. Tyrion had opened all of Jaime’s letters to Sansa Stark before sending them to Winterfell to make sure that they weren’t secret missives for their sister instead. He told himself that he was doing his duty as the Queen’s Hand, but he knew it was much more personal than that. He wanted to know when Jaime was going to disappear again.

He wanted to know when he would have to return to thinking of his big brother as an enemy.

And yet, Jaime was looking distastefully at the wine on the table. He’d said _her_ in a tone that dripped with venom. His letters to Sansa were all scrawled, sarcastic nonsense that seemed to all appearances to be directed to the Stark girl. Neither of Tyrion’s siblings was clever enough to come up with a code so elaborate, and though Tyrion didn’t recognize any of Sansa in her return letters to Jaime, he knew that could simply be because he scarcely knew his little wife at all, and had no idea what she might sound like in a letter to a friend rather than a fellow diplomat.

Jaime healed more every day. He grew stronger. Walked for longer. Asked more questions about his men and the state of things with the war. And yet he stayed. He didn’t try to run. Tyrion had his room watched at all times by men he trusted, and they never reported anything out of the ordinary. No bribes to servants. No questing attempts to test the limits of his gilded cage. Jaime was a model prisoner by all accounts, with nothing suspicious at all in his actions or attitude, which was so unlike him that it was suspicious on its own.

Jaime was still looking out the window. If he was standing by it, he could at least have the excuse of watching the training yard, but lying abed he simply looked like a stubborn boy who didn’t want to make eye contact. Tyrion could see the way his one hand was curled into a fist.

“Was she drinking a lot, then?” he asked. His tone was too tentative, too obviously hopeful. He couldn’t help it. He seemed always fated to be a child around Jaime.

“Yes,” Jaime said shortly. “I don’t want to talk about her.”

“Ah, so it’s your other lady love you wish to speak of.”

“No,” Jaime sighed. Tyrion stifled a smile. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

“The Lion of Lannister mooning after a woman most men regard as hideous. Oh, don’t glare at me. You look pathetic. I’m not saying anything untrue. Besides, I’ve come to find her quite…charming. And any man who has seen her fight would have to admit she’s impressive.”

“Are you trying to make me _jealous_?”

“No, but I admit my shittier impulses are all sort of deeply ingrained, so I may have been doing it by accident. Why? Is it working?”

“No,” Jaime insisted resolutely. “And it won’t. I know how she feels about me.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“This is torturous, you know. You could just tell me what you want me to know instead of _hinting_ at it.”

“I _don’t_ want you to know. You just keep sitting there, asking me about it. We don’t have to talk about it.”

“Well now I want to know, and you know what a curious beast I am. Out with it.”

“Oh, she loves me,” Jaime said, managing to make it sound utterly dismissive, though his eyes were too anxious to make the dismissiveness believable. “She doesn’t believe that I love her, though.”

“She came to see you, then?”

“She did.”

“And for some fool reason you told her that you love her?”

“The _fool reason_ was that medicine your healers keep putting in my drink. It makes me tired and truthful. It’s a terrible combination.”

“I wonder why she didn’t believe you.”

“Well, that was part of it. But I doubt she would have believed me anyway. I tried to bring it up the next day, and she nearly jumped out of her skin and pretended she had no idea what I was talking about. I dropped it, because the whole thing embarrassed both of us, and I was starting to long for death again.”

“Can you blame her?” Tyrion asked. “She’ll be vindicated when you change your mind and go running back to Cersei.”

Jaime shook his head. He looked at Tyrion sharply. His face was very drawn, his expression nearly hopeless.

“I’m not going back to Cersei,” he said. Tyrion kept his face blank, though it was a struggle.

“I didn’t think I’d ever hear you say that.” He _still_ didn’t, frankly. It was easy enough to speak words, even if they hadn’t been spoken before. It was much harder to follow through on them. Jaime wasn’t much of a one for empty promises, but he _was_ a man who promised more than he could deliver. He used to find ways to make it up to Tyrion as a child, but they weren’t children anymore, and Jaime was running out of chances.

“It took losing my hand to start it, but it took a sword in the side to end it. I can’t go back to Cersei. I’m not the same man I was when I was with her. I haven’t been for a while, but I pretended to be, because I didn’t know who else to be.”

He was serious. He was sincere. He didn’t look hollow anymore, the way he had when he first woke up. He looked more solid, like he had actually figured something out. Tyrion wanted the wine more than ever.

“You never did understand your own worth,” he managed, and Jaime gave him half a smile that hurt Tyrion’s heart to see.

“Maybe not,” Jaime said. “I hardly know who I am without her, but…it feels _better_. I don’t feel so trapped. I owed Brienne my thanks for that, at the very least, but instead I told her that I'm in love with her. I’m lucky she came back at all, even if she’s very _correct_ now.” He smiled a little, fondly, thinking of her. “Gods, she’s so _bad_ at pretending,” he said, as if even _that_ was worthy of love.

“You don’t sound particularly surprised that she doesn’t believe you,” Tyrion said.

“No. I’m not. _I_ wouldn’t have believed me either. _You_ don’t, and you know me better than anyone.”

“That’s exactly why I don’t believe you.”

“I know,” Jaime said. Tyrion hated this. Jaime’s small voice and his narrowed eyes and his obvious pain. He was rubbing at his stump idly, in a way he only ever did when he was particularly distressed, and Tyrion wanted to snap at him to stop. _Stop being upset. Stop being sad. I don’t know how to help you._

“I saw Brienne and The Blackfish and Robb Stark at Riverrun,” Jaime said suddenly. His voice was very faraway, like it got whenever he talked about serving under Aerys. “Brienne drew her sword on me, and I knew that she was prepared to use it. I let them go. I would have let them go regardless, I think, but I knew I couldn’t fight her, and I didn’t want to try. And then I went back to Kings Landing. All that way home, I was trying to tell myself that it was only Cersei, that I was eager to get back to Cersei, but it didn’t work anymore like it used to. I think I’ve felt this way for a long time. Not just love. Not just…not just Brienne. But this separation from Cersei. We aren’t the same people. We don’t… _I_ don’t want the same things. I loved her. I would have given her anything. I did horrible things for love of her. And for what? Did she ever even love me the same? I can’t remember what it used to be like. I think I’ve spent so long justifying all of it that I can’t remember if it was ever even good, or if it was just _good_ because it was the only thing I wanted.”

“Jaime,” Tyrion said softly. He had never seen his brother so calm and yet so earnestly shattered. It was worrying. Lannisters didn’t say sincere things like this. Lannisters said shitty, sarcastic things that contained hidden hurts, and then they moved on.

“I saw how cruel she was to you. I saw it, and I did what I could to alleviate it, and get you away from her, and protect you, but it wasn’t enough. It couldn’t be enough, because doing enough would have meant standing against her, and I never would have done that. Not even for you. I’m sorry.”

“Jaime, you don’t…”

“I should have left her after the sept,” Jaime insisted. His voice was growing in strength. Angry and confused and self-loathing. This was the Jaime who had chosen to die on that battlefield, and it made Tyrion’s stomach hurt just like last time. “All the way home, I felt unsettled. I knew something was wrong. And then Bronn told me. He said that my son was dead. Tommen and Uncle Kevan and the Tyrells and everybody. Everybody but Cersei. She crowned herself while the ashes still fell over the city. Wildfire, Tyrion. She used _wildfire_.”

Tyrion felt sick. He eyed his goblet. He didn’t drink, though it took almost everything not to do it.

“Yes,” he managed to say. He remembered the way the green lit up the night over the Blackwater. The screams that came from the water. The smell of blood and fire and burning flesh. “I know she did.”

“I don’t know how she kept her throne. I don’t know why no one stopped her. Why no one stopped her _before_ , even. But they didn’t. Last time, I…” He swallowed thickly, and looked away. Tyrion remembered what Daenerys had said, some time before she left: the truth of Jaime’s kingslaying. A truth that he had never told anyone except, apparently, Brienne of Tarth. It was hard not to feel bitter about that, though it was a child’s bitterness. _Why not me? Why didn’t you tell me?_

“Last time, you did the right thing,” he said, and Jaime looked at him. Frowning. “You can’t blame the girl for telling Daenerys. She wanted to save your life.”

Realization stole over Jaime’s face, followed immediately by something vulnerable that made Tyrion think _he_ should be the one to look away this time. But he didn’t. He watched his brother struggle through it.

“She'll never stop trying to save my life,” Jaime finally said. His jaw was clenched with something that looked an awful lot like fury. “It’s going to damn her eventually.”

“Loving you?” Tyrion asked, understanding what Jaime was truly saying. “From experience, it’s not nearly so dramatic.”

“Maybe not for you. None of us seem to know how to love properly. Father would be proud. Mother would have been horrified, I think. She loved us easily enough. I remember _that._ Brienne…she just won’t give up. It’s not in her nature. She would have rather died than kill me, I think, though it would have been a horrible trade. I should have gone with her to find the Stark girls years ago. I should have gone with her when I saw her at Riverrun. But I was weak.”

“I don’t know if it’s weakness,” Tyrion mused. He always thought Jaime’s fierce love was a strength: though it blinded him to the worst parts of the natures of his family, it made him invulnerable to Tyrion’s eyes. There was nothing Jaime would not do for the people he loved.

“I was weak,” Jaime reiterated. “I should have stopped her. I should have done anything. I should have killed the fucking High Sparrow myself and take the fall. Maybe Tommen would still be alive.”

“And you would be dead,” Tyrion said bitterly. “Just as you wished.”

“The world doesn’t need me,” Jaime said. Calm and earnest still. So wrong. So un-Lannister. It was faintly _embarrassing_ to Tyrion, actually. “It doesn’t need more men like me. It needs more people like _her_. People who swear oaths to good families and then stick to them. People who fight for the innocent. That’s what the world needs.”

“The Starks are just another family,” Tyrion reasoned. “I know you have a fondness for Sansa, and for Brienne, but they aren’t particularly special. They’re just a great house that has been dealt a poor hand, so you feel sorry for them.”

Jaime laughed bitterly. He shook his head. 

“You _do_ like to think neutrality is a clever stance sometimes,” he said. “Like removing all context and sense and proclaiming things _exactly the same_ is an enlightened position and not just…lazy.”

“I could slap you,” Tyrion said, though in truth he was almost delighted to see that wry amusement on Jaime’s face, even if it was at his expense.

“Sometimes I give you too much credit for cleverness. That’s all I’m saying.”

“You hate the Starks. You think they’re pompous bores.”

“They _are_. But they’re also…they’re good. They were good. And we ruined them.”

“It wasn’t only us.”

“No, but father’s hand…my _own_ hand started the war. Father’s shaped it.”

“The realm was ready to explode one way or another.”

“Is that how you justify it?”

“I don’t justify it at all. It was war. Terrible things happen in war. That’s why people put up with so much shit from each other. They’d rather not escalate.”

“Except father. Father escalated.”

“Father reacted, but yes, I suppose his reactions _did_ have a tendency to escalate.”

“You killed him for _some_ reason, I assume.”

“Yes. He was a bastard. Unfortunately not all of us have noble reasons for doing the things we do. I had my own grievances with him, but the health of the realm was not, I admit, foremost among them. I’m not a bloody Stark, since you seem to hold them in such high regard.”

“I didn’t say anything particularly shocking, you know.”

“I know. You said the same thing the rabble says, which is why it upset me. It’s not like you to take such a…pedestrian stance.”

“The rabble were right to call Aerys mad, and they were right to try and rise up against Joffrey. They understand _some_ things. And they’re right about the Starks. They’re right about us. Look at them and then look back at our own folly. Fool mistakes and uptight honor, yes. That’s their legacy. What’s ours? Father always thought we were the special ones, but we’re just a bunch of golden monsters, grasping for what we feel we’re owed.”

“If father could hear you,” Tyrion started to laugh. Jaime wasn’t laughing.

“Let him,” he said. “Let him crawl out of his crypt and try to tell me that his legacy was worth all this. All those deaths. All those people. The sept and the armies of the kings father helped tear down. Elia Martell and her children. The Starks at that wedding. Was it worth it? You can’t seriously tell me you think it was.”

“It’s not about _worth_ ,” Tyrion said, but he could tell that Jaime didn’t like that.

“What is it about then? What’s it for? Father was always trying to get me to understand, but I never could. _You_ did.”

“Everything you did, you did for this family,” Tyrion reminded him. “That was all father was asking.”

Jaime laughed. Another bitter sound. Tyrion wasn’t used to feeling like the fool beside Jaime. Jaime _wasn’t_ a fool, but he played the part of one so often that it was hard to remember that sometimes.

“Father wanted me to be _ambitious_ for the family,” Jaime reminded him. “I fought for Cersei. I fought for you. I killed to return to her. I killed to please her. To please father. I didn’t do any of it for ambition or for legacy. Not mine, anyway. My own children bore another man’s name. I could have died without passing on anything, and I wouldn’t have cared. It was for love. Not for any of the rest of it. I wanted to please all of you at once, and instead I failed you all.”

“You haven’t failed us.”

“I have. You…you’re the only one left I can fight for, and I don’t want to. You serve a woman I can’t trust. I failed Cersei by not stopping her. By indulging her. I failed father by not leaving the Kingsguard when I should have. I have failed everyone I have ever loved.”

“You haven’t failed me,” Tyrion said stubbornly, but Jaime only smiled.

“I have,” he said. “You just don’t want to admit it.”

Tyrion shook his head, though there was a ring of truth to Jaime’s words. Tyrion had always had a blind spot when it came to his brother. But how could he not? Jaime was the only one who had ever shown him any care.

“You’re here now,” he said. “Are you going to go back to her?”

“No,” Jaime answered. Tyrion had never heard him so certain. He wanted so badly to trust his brother. So badly to think that a man like Jaime truly could change.

“Make me believe you,” he said simply, and Jaime nodded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Dearest Brother by firewoodisland


	47. Robb VII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robb reels from his conversation with Sansa.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I was hoping that this next chapter was a Cersei chapter because those are relatively easy and short, but no, tragically it is...a Robb one. SO I guess this is as good a place as any to announce that I'm putting this fic on hiatus for a while, probably for around a month. I'll stick the explanation in the end notes because it might be a long one. Warning: I will probably sound like a whiny, ungrateful baby in it!

Above all else, Robb didn’t want Sansa to be right.

He had made mistakes. He had hurt his family with those mistakes. But he had _learned_ , hadn’t he?

Sansa hadn’t accused him to be cruel, and she hadn’t done it to be petty. He had seen the fear in her expression, and he had understood. There were so many things that were still unspoken between them. There was their mother’s death, and Robb’s choice of wife, and the selfishness that led to their family’s suffering. There was Jaime Lannister, and Robb’s refusal to trade him for his sisters. Robb had blamed himself and hated himself and had survived it, but Sansa hadn’t had the chance. He knew how something like that could burn inside you.

Sansa had been quick to leap to Theon's defense, back when Robb first returned. _He saved me_ , she had said, and maybe she hadn’t even meant to make her voice as damning as it was. _He_ had saved her. Theon, a traitor. And Robb had not. He could understand her capacity for forgiveness. He could understand that she didn’t hate Theon anymore the way that Robb still did. But Sansa had been granted that closure, and Robb hadn’t.

Sansa didn’t _hate_ him, Robb was sure. But it felt similar to his own inability to forgive their father’s former ward. Sansa couldn’t forgive him because they hadn’t talked about it, because she didn’t understand, because perhaps she never would. Maybe it would always be there between them, this almost-hate that bubbled beneath her porcelain mask.

He had failed his family before, and he had hurt Sansa badly. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt her again. Jon had been clever to point out that an attachment to Daenerys wouldn’t be the worst thing, and maybe he had even been right. But Robb didn’t _want_ an attachment to Daenerys. He didn’t want an attachment to anyone but his family and Brienne. He wanted time to grieve properly, and time to heal, and he didn’t want to think about marrying anyone else, let alone _loving_ anyone else. He didn’t want to worry Sansa, and he didn’t want to _leave_ Sansa, and he didn’t want to give her any cause to doubt him anymore.

But… _was_ she right?

His days with Daenerys at Dragonstone and then at Highgarden had been odd and warm and enjoyable. Their conversations often left him feeling more lighthearted than he’d been since he raised his banners and went to war for his family. He and Daenerys had both been under a great deal of pressure to find common ground, and it had been easier than expected. Every conversation felt almost removed from their separate goals. They had been long, rambling, and they touched on so many things that Robb hadn’t felt comfortable discussing with anyone else. They understood each other in a way that felt _instinctive_ , because they had been through things that were, if not similar, than at least parallel. They had been young when they came to power, and they had known betrayals, and they had known loss. They both had to put on brave faces for their people. It was no wonder that those faces slipped around each other. Recognizing each other the way they did.

_Gods be good, could Sansa be right?_

He would not have called it love, even as he considered Sansa’s accusation more seriously. He would have called it regard. _Admiration_ , at the strongest. He hesitated to call it love. He had been in love once before, and it had nearly ruined him. It had been stronger, more sudden, more intense than what he was feeling now for the Targaryen queen. This couldn’t be love.

But couldn’t it? He had been with her in Dragonstone and Highgarden for weeks. That was as much time as it had taken him to fall in love with Talisa. With Talisa, it had been immediate. An attraction, a draw to her sharpness with him and her kindness for the wounded men on the battlefield. With Daenerys, it had been slow enough to creep up on him. It had taken him by surprise. The first time he met her, he thought that there was not a person he could have less in common with. But now, somehow…he thought of their laughter as she took him high above the clouds. He thought of the soft way she smiled at him when she saw him hugging Arya. He thought of the hurt in her eyes when he stood between she and Brienne on the battlefield, and he thought of the way it made his stomach clench to see it.

_You were supposed to be a smarter man than this._

He was supposed to have grown out of this. He had ruined everything once for love. Why had the gods spared him if not so he could learn his lesson and choose better the next time?

_It would be a good alliance_ , Jon had said.

Was that what it boiled down to? He was allowed to care for someone only if they made a good alliance? He hated the thought, and yet…

She _was_ beautiful. She _was_ kind. He _did_ admire her. Perhaps it was love. Perhaps it was only something that could grow into it, if he nurtured it instead of cutting out the roots of it now.

It was tempting. Close himself away. It felt like the honorable choice to destroy the seeds that had been planted so that he could be sure he would not make another foolish mistake. They needed her alliance, but they could get it in some other way. She would not decide to help them or not based on his feelings or lack of them. If he closed himself off now, perhaps he could do it without too much pain.

_Your mistake was not in loving her_ , Brienne had said, once, and she was right. He had not chosen to love Talisa. But he had chosen to _marry_ her. It wasn’t the love that was the problem.

People could love more than once in their lives. Not in the stories, perhaps, but he was certainly too old to believe in _those_. Love could be true even if it was given to more than one person. It wasn’t a resource that divided itself and lessened itself with each new person to whom it was given. People _died_. People died, and they left their loved ones behind, but their loved ones moved on and wed again and chose to open their hearts once more. He never thought that he would be one of those people. He thought…

Well. Talisa was dead. Why would he want anyone else? He had been so sure that she would be the only one. He had wanted to die with her, but he _hadn’t_. He was still alive.

If he was going to lose the war for love. If he was going to fail his family. If he was going to lose the respect of his people. At least he should stay loyal to her memory. At least he should shun the possibility of loving again.

Sansa had been right to look betrayed. He _had_ betrayed her. Her and Talisa both.

She couldn’t be right. He didn’t want her to be right. She _was_.

* * *

He found Bran in the godswood. It seemed to be Bran’s favorite place to be, now. He often stared up at the heart tree just like their father used to, but there was something different about it. Bran’s gaze always seemed so far away. Sansa and Jon and Arya had all tried to explain it. Quietly, separately. Each of their explanations was different from the others. The one thing they all agreed on was that Bran had powers that had proven useful in helping them decide to remove Littlefinger. Sansa and Jon both seemed convinced that Bran was _gone_. Arya kept saying that Bran just needed to be reminded who he was supposed to be. Robb hadn’t had enough time with him yet to sort out how he felt for himself.

In truth, he had been avoiding Bran. He had left Bran at Winterfell alone. He had left him, and Theon had betrayed them, and Bran had been alone for all this time. There were so many things that Robb should have done for his family. So many people he had disappointed. They were all difficult to look at, but _Bran_ …Bran saw so much, now. Robb didn’t want to know what Bran saw when he looked at _him_.

Bran smiled when Robb sat down on the rock across from him. It was distant, like everything else, and perhaps Robb was imagining the true mirth he saw there.

“Father used to sit there,” Bran said. His voice was deep and unfamiliar, and Robb missed his baby brother with a fierceness that reminded him of the piercing pain of arrows in his chest. It wasn’t even just the creature that had apparently taken up residence in Bran’s body. It was something else. The lost time and how much bigger Bran was, now. The deepened voice. The changing shape of his face. Robb had missed so much. He had known that coming back to Winterfell would mean seeing everything changed. Everything different from how it was when he left. But he was somehow unprepared for how that would make him feel. Sansa’s chilly distance and Jon’s wounded seriousness and Arya’s sharpness and everything about Bran. It was home. It _was_. But Robb didn’t fit in it the way he used to, and he was beginning to think that he never would. It wasn’t his place anymore. He had made too many mistakes, and he had been away for too long.

“Father used to spend hours here,” Robb agreed.

“And now it’s you,” Bran continued. It was a serious tone that said his words were about more than just where Robb was sitting.

“I’m trying,” he said.

“I know you are,” Bran replied.

“I just…I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing.”

“No one ever knows if they’re doing the right thing.”

“I was hoping you might help me figure it out.”

A sigh, then. A flicker of annoyance.

“I can’t tell you that,” Bran said.

“Because I have to figure it out for myself?”

“Because I don’t _know_. That isn’t how this works.”

Of course not. That would be too easy. Robb tried to hide his disappointment, though he had a feeling that Bran wouldn’t have cared if he _was_ disappointed. He looked into the frozen pool instead. The snow around him. The red of the heart tree. He felt like he was at home for the first time since he had returned. It was a particular quality to the air. A crispness that reminded him of his childhood.

There was a time when their mother had been ill when she was pregnant with Arya, and he and Jon and Theon would bring Sansa out to the godswood to distract her. Nobody was bothering with lessons or etiquette with Catelyn so sick and Ned so worried. Sansa had played at being a princess trapped up high in the heart tree, while Robb and Jon and Theon went on missions to rescue her. She always giggled and cheered for them, even as she got shivery with cold. It was always Theon who had to pull her down from her tower, because he was the only one tall enough to reach. She would cling to his shoulders and declare him her Dragonknight, and Robb would act all affronted that she didn’t thank _him_ , too. Once she called Robb and Jon Theon’s _dutiful squires_ , and Theon had laughed so hard at that that it had turned into a genuine scuffle.

It had been years since Robb was so free of responsibility, but the godswood always made him feel young again. Before the wars and his choices and the pain that had followed.

“Do you remember,” he started. He paused. He didn’t even know if Bran was there _to_ remember. _I’m not Bran_ , Bran kept saying, every time someone tried to prompt him to act as Bran would have. _Not really_. Robb continued anyway. He wanted to say it, even if Bran didn’t remember. “Do you remember before I left Winterfell? I used to come to your rooms at the end of the day. After playing the part of father for hours.”

“I remember,” Bran said. “You were afraid.”

“I didn’t think you’d noticed.”

“I always noticed.”

“I didn’t _want_ you to notice,” Robb admitted with a laugh. “I wanted you to think I was your brave older brother.”

“It was how I knew you _were_ so brave,” Bran admitted quietly. Robb looked back through the trees, towards the castle. He looked at the heart tree again, and at Bran’s face. He had trouble meeting his little brother’s gaze for too long. Part of it was the power that he didn’t understand. Part of it was the shame.

“It was the only place I felt strong,” he said. “With you. It was the only place anything made sense.”

“You’re still strong, even when you aren’t here,” Bran said. “You’ll make the right choices.”

“I thought it didn’t work like that.”

“It doesn’t. But I’m telling you anyway. It’s what you need to hear.”

Robb could not stop his laugh, and he could not stop the way his eyes welled with furious tears. He missed Bran. He wanted Bran back. This three-eyed raven creature wasn’t Bran, but he was _close_. Bran was in there somewhere. Why was it so difficult for Bran to fight his way to the surface? Why couldn’t Bran just come _home_?

Robb stood, and he bent down to wrap his arms around Bran.

“I have to leave soon,” he said. “We need to head back to Dragonstone. Her army is already headed there. I don’t know when I’ll be home again.”

“You’ll be home again soon,” Bran said. Robb pulled back to look at him. Bran’s expression was still largely blank, although there was an expression on his face that might have been called a smile, if Robb was feeling generous. “Daenerys knows the stakes.”

Robb ruffled his brother’s hair. Bran sighed again, and quietly fixed it.

* * *

Robb headed back to the castle. He felt better, though he knew he shouldn’t. Bran hadn’t told him anything he didn’t already know.

When he entered the courtyard, he saw Daenerys standing up on the battlements. It had begun to snow in earnest, and she was watching it fall. The expression on her face was one of girlish wonder, and Robb’s heart clenched. He was an utter fool, to need his sister to point out something that now seemed obvious.

Daenerys spied him watching her from below, and she waved to him. A small wave, fingers curled. Hesitant, but smiling. It was like so many of their interactions at Dragonstone and Highgarden. How had he not realized it? He took the gesture and her smile as permission, and he headed to the stairs. The guards on the wall nodded to him, pleased to see him. Some had already been watching the dragon queen, with fascination or admiration or suspicion. His people were as divided on her as his siblings. Most of the guards were watching Drogon; he had settled down in the snow and appeared to be sleeping under a growing mound of the stuff.

When Robb finally reached her side, he allowed himself a moment to take her in. Her cheeks and the tip of her nose were red with cold, and she was dressed strikingly, wearing a black cloak with gray fur around the neck. It was far too long on her, and the fur pressed up against her face, drowning her in it, and she laughed when she saw him failing to smother his smile. It was a young, pealing sound. His heart clenched again. _You idiot._

“Your sister made the same expression,” she said. “But _she_ didn’t laugh at me.”

“Sansa’s more polite than I am. They would have been better off giving you something of Arya’s. Or Bran’s old things, perhaps.”

“It isn’t my fault your sister is a giantess,” Daenerys said. Robb grinned and leaned against the wall beside her.

“She’s my height,” he pointed out. Daenerys indicated the difference between them with one pale hand creeping out from behind where she was clutching the folds of her cloak. Robb laughed again.

“She told me she’d have something made for me if I came back, as long as I gave her advance notice,” Daenerys continued. “She’s a shrewd one, your sister. From what you’ve told me, she had to be.”

“She did,” Robb said. His laughter faded as he remembered the betrayed expression on Sansa’s face when she accused him of having feelings for Daenerys. “Is that why you’re up here? Escaping her? I must warn you this is her favorite place.”

“She showed me, actually,” Daenerys replied, looking back out. “I told her I wanted to see the snow.”

“It’s all the same, sorry to say. White. Wet. Cold.”

“Maybe that isn’t exciting to someone who grew up with it, but I can’t imagine ever seeing enough. I almost died in a desert once, you know.”

“So you’ve told me,” Robb replied. He felt drawn in by her. Like this, without their advisors. Without Brienne and Grey Worm standing guard outside the door. The snow was falling fast. Big heavy flakes of it, and it made the rest of the world fade away. It could have been just them. Just them in all the world. Robb wanted that. He wanted to be alone with her. He wanted to be with her endlessly. How was it that he hadn’t noticed until now?

“Everyone talks of the north as if it’s this cold, broken place,” Daenerys was saying. She was still looking out at the snow, as if she could not feel his eyes on her. “But I like it. It’s charming. It feels…steady. In a way I appreciate. There were a lot of reasons for it to distrust me, but it has welcomed me. It has shown faith in me when I wasn’t sure I deserved it.”

She finally met his eyes, and he allowed his smile to grow.

“I’m glad to hear that,” he said. He understood, of course, that she wasn’t speaking only of the north.

“And I’m glad to tell you,” Daenerys said. She moved closer to him. Her hand inched across the stone to his. She wasn’t wearing gloves, and Robb took it between his, to keep it warm. Because he wanted to take it. She gazed up at him. She was waiting for him to choose.

He wasn’t thinking of anyone but her when he made his choice. He wasn’t thinking of himself. He wasn’t thinking of his mistakes. He wasn’t thinking of anything. _You’re a fool_ , he thought, but he kissed her anyway. Her lips were warm, and she was inviting, and he pulled her closer, into the confines of his cloak, and he was _kissing_ her. He wanted to kiss her. She deserved to be kissed.

When he finally found his wits, he pulled back. Not very far, though he released her hand. She was still looking up at him. Lightly dazed, and smiling.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I hope you don’t mean that,” she replied easily. She knew very well that he didn’t.

“I only...I meant to tell you first. That I admire you.”

“I suppose it’s only fair for me to tell you, then, that I admire you as well.”

“It’s only fair,” Robb agreed. Daenerys pressed herself still closer to him. She looked nothing so much as just…content. Pleased. He liked the look of her like that. It made him ache for something, though he wasn’t sure what. A warmth and safety that he had been missing.

“I doubt I am the only one who has received pressure from my advisors,” she said.

“Davos has mentioned it. Sansa did as well.”

“It would be a good alliance,” Daenerys said. Her expression grew more serious. “But your losses are more recent than mine. I would understand if you…”

“It would be a good alliance,” Robb said. “And I would have wanted to kiss you even if it wasn’t. I may have resisted, because I made love into a mistake the last time I felt it. I’ll never regret her, but…my choices killed her, and they killed my mother. I could not choose another Talisa. Not freely. Not without fearing for my family. This time, I feel…lucky.”

“It’s what I feel as well,” Daenerys said. She had one hand pressed against his chest, and he could feel it through his clothing, and he wondered if she could feel how hard his heart was beating. That aching feeling was back. He was thinking now of Talisa. Of his mother. Of all his men who had died when he made his poor choices. Of Sansa.

“You should know this won’t change anything,” he said. “It isn’t only me I’m thinking of. Our negotiations…”

“This will be added to the negotiations,” Daenerys agreed. “Like everything else. I don’t expect you to fall to your knees because I kissed you. Not you.”

“No,” Robb agreed, relieved. “Not me.”

_It won’t be like last time_ , he told them all. _This will be different. I promise._

“We should leave for Dragonstone tomorrow,” Daenerys was saying. She was still looking at him in that way he found he now craved. _Please, don’t let this be a mistake_. “I’ve made up my mind, and I want to be at the head of our army when we march here to fight the dead.”

* * *

Robb didn’t know if Jon had been watching him on the battlements, or if perhaps there was just something in the miserable set of his expression. Whatever it was, Jon saw _something._ He found Robb in the courtyard and gestured silently for Robb to follow. Robb did.

It was late enough that the kitchens were empty but for a boy delivering freshly chopped wood. Jon waited until he had finished before finding them some cups and some horrid drink he said was a wildling staple. Robb drank it despite the taste.

“I can still tell her no,” he said. “We can still find some other way.”

“Why?” Jon asked.

“I’ll have to give up the crown. The lords won’t like that. They won’t like it either way, that it’s a marriage alliance.”

“Some of them have brought up the idea of it,” Jon said. Robb wasn’t used to this, to Jon’s calm, steady certainty. It was another way Jon had grown up without Robb noticing, and it made Robb feel like a child.

“They have?” he asked.

“Yes. They have. They think she has to make her king out of _someone_ , and they see no reason why it shouldn’t be you. Others of them think you’ve bedded her already. Others think you’re making her fall in love with you to control her.” Jon spread his hands wide, a glimmer of amusement on his face. “You know them as well as I do. They’re a fickle bunch, and they all have their own ideas. You’re never going to make a step that pleases all of them. Not that Sansa’s stopped trying yet, but it always ends in frustration.”

“She’s been dealing with a lot from them, then.”

“Oh, aye. No more than usual. If it’s not you and Daenerys, it’s the grain stores. If it’s not the grain stores, it’s _Sansa’s_ marriage. If it’s not Sansa’s marriage, it’s some empty holdfast or another that some lord wants for himself. It’s endless.” He grew more serious, and he fidgeted with the cup in his hands. “They won’t be pleased with you if you bend the knee. Some of them might have a true grievance with it. Sansa already has a plan to try and make them think it was their idea all along. Seed the idea of it carefully enough that they start thinking on their own that an alliance might be in their benefit, even if it means giving up the crown. Long as we keep some power of our own.”

“Will that work?”

“I don’t know. She seems to think so, and I’ve seen her do something like it before. She has a knack for it.”

“She shouldn’t have to.”

“No,” Jon said, with a sharp look. “She shouldn’t. But she did. And she still does. It isn’t all you, you know. Even if everything had gone exactly as you planned it, she would’ve had to learn some harsh lessons some time or another. But some of the things that happened to her…”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“I do. I just…I don’t know how to help her. I don’t know how to make it right. If I tell Daenerys that a marriage alliance is off the table, we can find some other way of…”

“Is that what you think?” Jon asked. “You think Sansa will trust you if you refuse to love anyone else? Forever? Is that what you think will make it up to her?”

“I,” Robb started. It had seemed so obvious, and now it seemed so obviously foolish. He swallowed. “I don’t know. I don’t…what else can I do?”

“I don’t know, but Sansa’s not…it’s not about that,” Jon said. He shook his head. Again it struck Robb as so off-balancing, so unsettling, that it was Jon who had the insights now into Sansa’s mind. Jon, who’d barely ever spoken to her when they were children. “Talisa and Daenerys could not be more different. So you think you love her. It’s a good alliance. It isn’t Talisa again. Sansa wouldn’t expect you to throw that away just to prove that you _would_ , this time.”

“I don’t know what else to do,” Robb admitted miserably. Jon poured more of the drink into Robb’s cup.

“Negotiate,” he said. “Don’t lose your head and give her everything just because you love her. Start with the crown. An independent north. We’re already preparing to lose that, and Sansa will do her work in making sure the northern lords will accept it as much as they can. But Daenerys can’t know that. I don’t care if you love her, and I don’t care if she loves you. Her advisors will push for as much as they can, and she’s spent her whole life convinced that all of Westeros is hers by right.” Jon took in a sharp breath. “Which brings me to another thing.”

* * *

Afterward, Robb went back to his room, and his head was swimming. It wasn’t _just_ the drink, but the drink certainly didn’t help. It seemed to him that Jon could have given him more warning about how potent that stuff was.

But it had helped. Drink often muddled his head and made him tired and unfocused, but not this time. This time, it broke down everything, and his conversation with Jon seemed sharp and in-focus.

The legitimate heir to the throne.

He had laughed when Jon first revealed it, thinking it to be some jape, but Jon’s expression didn’t waver, and Robb knew he was serious.

“I don’t want the throne,” Jon had said, “but she might assume I do, and that gives us something to work with.”

It was so like Jon, to offer himself up on a platter. He wanted to remain Jon Snow. He wanted to be Jon Stark. But if Daenerys insisted, and if the terms Robb asked for were too difficult for Daenerys to give, then he was allowing Robb to use _him_ as part of the bargain.

“She told me that she doesn’t think she can have children. She told me she wants the Targaryen line to continue,” Jon had said. “And she wants the throne. She has the army, and she has the dragons, so my claim doesn’t mean anything, but it might mean something to her. I’ll give it up, and I’ll marry whoever I have to, and I’ll give her the Targaryen children she can’t have. Whatever she needs. As long as it keeps Arya and Sansa safe.”

Robb was still reeling. From his words and from his resignation and from the simple fact that Jon was choosing everything that Robb hadn’t, and yet there was no resentment or expectation or _anything_ in the action.

“It’s different,” Jon kept telling him, and maybe it was. But the differences would not stop Robb from hating himself for the ways in which it was the same.

But…negotiation. Jon was right. It wouldn’t solve everything, but words would do little enough to heal what he had broken in his family. It was in actions he would have to prove himself. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, when I first started writing this fic, I was really excited. I liked what I was doing. I liked that I was branching out and trying something new after sticking primarily to Jaime/Brienne fics. I was a little overwhelmed by the response at first, but I kept working. I then got VERY overwhelmed by the response, but I kept working. Lately, my overwhelmedness is keeping me from even WANTING to work on this story. It's a shitty thing to say. It really is. "People are reading my story and having really strong reactions" should be a good thing, and maybe it would be? But there are so many stressful things going on in my real life, and this story has continued to tip me over the edge of full-blown panic. Not because of its existence on its own, or because of any one comment or chapter, but because it is just existing in concert with so many other things. 
> 
> I want to like editing this story again, and i want to like sharing it. But at a certain point i became SO consumed in incorporating feedback (even conflicting feedback! Which...isn't easy, because there are so many passionate opinions from so many different angles) that i stopped writing my story and started trying to write the story I thought you all wanted to read. Which isn't fun for me. And I dread fucking it up. I hate that this happened on a chapter I was already nervous about! I hate that I have to be nervous at all! Fic is my fun stress-free hobby, but it's turning into something I genuinely worry about, and so I need a break. 
> 
> My plan is to finish editing the story in its entirety and post it VERY quickly afterward (like 4-5 chapters a day until it's done). I realize that's not ideal, but I want it finished. I don't want to leave it in limbo, but if i keep going chapter-by-chapter and keep feeling utterly terrible at this, I'm going to lose my mind. Again, I feel shitty about this, but the past few weeks have sapped my enthusiasm for this in a big way, and I don't want it to be a permanent thing, and I don't want it to make me want to take a longer break from fic in general. 
> 
> So...I'm giving myself a month (the end of March) because I wrote the first 200k in a month, and i'm fairly confident I can finish off the whole thing in around that time while not driving myself crazy trying to make everyone happy. And then I can just post it, and you can be free to think whatever you want without me taking every comment WAY TOO SERIOUSLY! Again, i'm sorry, and I know this is very much a ME problem, and I hope I haven't disappointed too many of you. 
> 
> I'll still be over at tumblr and might work on some easier fic in the meantime, but I'll definitely be working hard on this story. You just won't see it for a while!


	48. Cersei III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cersei learns of movement from Dragonstone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, remember how I said I'd be back in a month and then in a month the entire world changed? That's been fun, hasn't it? Anyway, here I am! I wanted to post 5 chapters today, but then I woke up in a Pandemic Mood, so I played Animal Crossing for 5 hours instead, and in the end...isn't one chapter good enough for my first day back? Yeah I'm doing fine with this whole pandemic thing. Why do you ask?
> 
> Not-jokes aside, I DO hope to update this multiple times a day (today notwithstanding) until it's done. 
> 
> I would also ONCE AGAIN like to remind you all that this is a fic that I wrote because I like romance and didn't like the last few seasons of Game of Thrones. I know I included Robb and that's apparently been confusing and has led to expectations of some, like, grand political overhaul, but the truth is that I just like Robb and wanted him back in the story. That's it. This isn't that deep. I made a joke on tumblr yesterday on how to tag this so that I can remind everyone that I am in fact a Jaime stan first and a human being second, and while I received some hilarious suggestions ("I'm warning you right now that this was written while sat in Jaime's colon" was a particular favorite!) I'm going to just rely on everyone to be adult about this and chill. I turned off anon comments though I'm not sure it'll do any good, and I'd just like to remind everyone that I am writing this for free, and you are reading it for free, and if you don't like it, you can leave the page at any time, and the world will just keep on imploding. 
> 
> On that note, I'm going to try and turn off the part of my brain that's a comment-hungry little monster, and I'm going to try and avoid reading comments until the entirety of the fic has been posted, since the comments were what discouraged me in the first place. If there's something like a typo or a question or an immediate issue, you can always reach me at angel-deux-writes on tumblr, but be cool, please. I'm not really interested in hearing about how you'd have written it, or what you're disappointed about. I'm trying to make this as painless as possible for myself lmao. 
> 
> Anyway, if my complaining hasn't turned you off yet, I hope you enjoy?

“Your grace,” Qyburn said again, louder.

She had heard him well enough the first time. He used to be better at reading her moods.

She had chosen him as Hand because she thought they understood each other, but he was turning out to be just like the rest of them. Fawning over her or demanding too much of her, and always doing each at the exact wrong time. If she had anyone else she could replace him with, she would have done it in a heartbeat. But she needed him; he was the only one who had stayed through everything, and she trusted him more than she trusted anyone else.

She closed her eyes. She drew a deep breath through clenched teeth. She turned to face him. She hadn’t answered his initial call because she wasn’t ready to have this conversation. Was he really so stupid that he couldn’t see that? 

Jaime _._ It had to be about Jaime. Why else would Qyburn use that careful tone with her? _The dragon queen has delivered his head at last. That’s exactly what I would do if I had something of_ hers _and she was refusing to engage._

She had seen her father’s corpse. She held Joffrey as he died. She looked upon Myrcella’s bones, and she saw what remained of her Tommen before they took him away. She could not look upon Jaime. She knew he was lost to her. She had accepted that. She would not force herself to see. It would be too much, after everything else she had lost. _Tyrion was right. He took it all from me_.

“What is it?” she made herself ask.

“Word from Dragonstone,” Qyburn answered.

“A message?” she asked. Her voice didn’t waver. She was apart from her own body. Her fingers tingled as if they had been asleep and were trying again to wake. She tried to call up Jaime’s face, the way he looked when she saw him last. She couldn’t. She could only imagine him in sensations. Glimpses of a much younger and much more golden man. A flash of a smile not yet sharp. Love before she understood it as the weapon it was. Before she grasped and twisted and pulled it into the shape she needed it to be.

_A message._ His head, perhaps, or his other hand. She had been expecting it. She hadn’t replied to the first attempt. She hadn’t replied to any of the others. She hadn’t sent anyone to get Jaime out, either. She had waited, fortified, safe within her walls. It was what Jaime would have advised her to do. She was safe, and she was in the seat of her power. Their _family’s_ power. She hoped he didn’t suffer too badly. She hoped they killed him quickly. She hoped Daenerys Targaryen had learned that Cersei would not be cowed with petty tricks. At least then Jaime’s death would serve some purpose.

She’d heard only days ago from Qyburn that the dragon queen’s army had left Highgarden seemingly abandoned. Fearing a trap, Cersei hadn’t sent any of her diminished forces to take it. It wasn’t worth the risk. The armies from across the sea would have taken all the food with them when they left, anyway, and the food had been her aim in sending Jaime to take the Reach. Of course the dragon queen would know that. A seemingly empty Highgarden containing yet another ambush would be exactly the kind of trap she would expect Cersei to blunder into.

The food would need to come from somewhere else, then. Her people were starving, and when they starved, they became more difficult to control. Petyr Baelish was an odious little man, and he was rumored to be helping the Starks, but he also controlled the Vale. _They_ would perhaps have some of the food that Kings Landing needed, and Littlefinger was the easiest man to win over with promises of power. Whatever the Starks had that he wanted, she would offer him _more_. There was value in men who held no loyalty to anyone but themselves.

There was value in men who were loyal solely to _her_ , too. The Mountain. Qyburn. _Jaime_. But Jaime was lost, and she could not grieve him yet. She would lie awake sometimes and feel a deep blanket of sadness settle over her, but it didn’t feel like grief. It felt like a helplessness that she would not allow herself to feel in daylight. An empty bed. A fading memory of the lines on his face. An awareness that everything had slipped away from her. That she had fought and struggled her whole life to find some shred of power, some safety that could lead to happiness, and it had all been for nothing. It wasn’t grief yet, but it felt like it sometimes.

Qyburn was hesitating. Looking at her oddly. He wore his worry for her on his face. But was he worried _about_ her? About _her_? Was he worried because he cared even a bit for her welling panic, or was he worried about her capabilities?

_There is no one left who cares for you. You don’t need them to care for you. Remember that._ It was not anyone else’s voice she heard in those commands, and yet she thought of her father. His steely expression. His cold eyes. His disappointment.

She arched her eyebrows at Qyburn, spurring him on.

“They’re leaving, your grace,” he said. “Leaving Dragonstone. They’re marching.”

“They’re marching here?” she asked. She would not let her tremor of fear show. She would not even allow herself to feel it. She imagined Jaime, outside her walls. Held hostage. On his knees. They would threaten him. They would expect her to do anything to save him. Yes, they would think her so weak. Jaime would not beg for his life. He wouldn’t say anything. He would know her better than that. He would want her to burn them all when his head was cleaved from his neck, and that was exactly what she would do.

“North, your grace,” Qyburn said. The fantasy fell away. Cersei turned to look back out the window as if she could see them out there, bypassing her city. _Ignoring_ her.

“Are you certain?” she asked.

“Yes, your grace.”

“ _Why_?”

“I don’t know, your grace. There are conflicting reports. Stories, most of them. Camp tales by drunken, fearful men.”

“Can you _at least_ tell me if they march north as allies? Or are they to be the north’s enemies?”

“Allies, your grace. Robb Stark and Daenerys Targaryen ride together at the head of the army. There are already rumors of a marriage alliance.”

She was missing too much information. People made choices and did things for such incomprehensible reasons. She had laughed at Robb Stark when he was supposed to have lost his head for love of some woman from Volantis. She couldn’t understand his choice, and she couldn’t believe that he had risked everything to _marry_ the girl. Had the man never heard of a mistress? But it taught her something valuable: people made choices that weren’t in their best interests. She had been so used to her father’s logic and his intelligence that she sometimes forgot that Tywin Lannister was an uncommon sort of man.

Ned Stark had been a fascinating creature for that reason. Making every wrong choice out of his fool adherence to his own code of honor. He had loved Robert beyond reason, though. Even _he_ wasn’t as married to honor has he liked to think. His bastard aside, he had looked the other way when Robert made his follies, and he excused them out of love for a brother. She would have hated him for that, even if he never threatened her or the children. But he had taught her such valuable lessons, even so. The extent to which a man’s pride could be used against him. The son, however. He was supposed to be different. Tywin had spoken of his battle prowess with frustration and admiration both, and Cersei believed him. For all his mistakes in choosing love above his duty, Robb Stark was still a shrewd boy, and he would not make such an alliance unless it was necessary.

There _had_ to be a logical reason for both armies to march north. She tried to remember the news that Qyburn had been sharing with her for the past few moons. She had scarcely paid attention; there was nothing in the north that she needed, except perhaps for Sansa Stark’s head, and that could wait until their more capable enemies had been handled. But now the dragon queen was marching north. _She_ had seen something of interest up there. What even existed in that dreary place that required an entire army to fight it? There had been reports ages ago of Wildlings crossing the Wall, but it had been a peaceful resettlement, and she knew that the Bastard of Winterfell had courted them openly, probably to replace their dwindling army after the battle against the Bolton bastard. Perhaps there was an uprising to contend with? Cersei knew enough about the size of the Targaryen army that it seemed absurd to think they would need their full force to fight against a few wildlings, but perhaps the Wildling force was larger than had been reported. Or perhaps…

_Stories_ , Qyburn had said, dismissively. Cersei had heard those stories too, if they were the same ones he spoke of. The dead rising again. Movement beyond the Wall. Qyburn was right to be dismissive, almost certainly, but…well, what _else_ would prompt Daenerys Targaryen to take her entire force north? She had come from across the sea, where it was warm and balmy, warmer even than Kings Landing in the midst of summer. There was every reason to keep her forces south, but instead she marched straight into the land of winter. Why? What _else_ could compel her?

Or. It could be a feint somehow.

Yes, that had to be it. There could be no dead men rising across the Wall. It had to be Daenerys trying to goad Cersei into dropping her guard. She had left Highgarden exposed and no doubt was disappointed when Cersei did not fall for that trap. Now she was making an even bigger show in leaving Dragonstone. She expected Cersei to follow that trail, expected Cersei to try and greedily gobble up the empty castles and leave her own home exposed. Well, the dragon queen had a lot to learn.

“Prepare the Golden Company,” she said. “They should be ready to engage. I’m not convinced she’s marching north at all.”

“Of course, your grace,” Qyburn said, though he hesitated, and she knew that he wanted to bring up the issue of gold again. _The Golden Company won’t fight without it_ , he’d reminded her often enough, and she sent him away and bade him to make more promises she couldn’t keep, but it wouldn’t last forever, and she knew that. She suddenly could not stand the way he said it. _Your grace_. She didn’t feel very queenly when she couldn’t even feed her own people. She had borrowed too heavily from the Iron Bank to pay for the Golden Company, and that left little for trading across the sea. The Golden Company would protect her, and they would protect Kings Landing, but only for as long as she could pay them. _Lannisters always pay their debts_ , she had told them, but those words would not be enough forever. Eventually they would know. Robert had left the kingdom creaking under the weight of his debts, and the wars of the past few years had ruined it. Everything she tried to do fell apart, turned to sand sifting between her fingers, because everyone around her remained utterly incompetent and impossible to please.

She had too little to her name. Jaime had tried to point it out, but she hadn’t listened. If only he was here, she would listen this time. Too many enemies, and not enough resources. She had wildfire, and there was enough food still coming in from the ports that she would not starve, but the people in Flea Bottom grew restless, and she knew from experience that there was only so much that Goldcloaks could do. She had been in the middle of that riot during Joffrey’s reign. She would not like to be caught in another.

The Mountain, of course, would protect her if it came to it. But would it be enough? Even The Mountain might fall against an army of rioting peasants.

“Have we heard anything from Euron Greyjoy?” she asked. Qyburn hesitated, which meant already that the answer was no.

“His niece and nephew sailed for the Iron Islands with borrowed forces from Daenerys Targaryen, shortly after arriving at Dragonstone,” Qyburn said. “He may be caught in a battle, or perhaps he has triumphed and is on his way here.”

“Yes, that seems likely,” Cersei drawled. She hated to ally with the man, but the stories of that horn were too tempting to be ignored. It was also difficult to ignore the rumors and his reputation, but she was increasingly backed into a corner, and she would be willing to do anything to keep her seat.

_For what?_

That persistent little voice inside her.

_For what? Why? Who are you doing this for? Why do you want it? Your bed is cold. Your children are dead. Your father is dead. Jaime is gone. Tyrion hates you. Your people are starving. There is no one left to love you._

_I don’t need them to love me._

They were _supposed_ to love her. She was supposed to be a good queen. Better than Robert had been as king. Why wouldn’t she be? Her husband had been a drunken fool, and she was her father’s true heir. She had languished by Robert’s side for years, afforded no respect and with no one to listen to her. They all thought her weak and vain and foolish, and this was supposed to be her chance to show them her true power. But everything she did…

_You have failed. They will remember you as a failure. Father would be ashamed._

That little voice always sounded so much like Jaime. Not Jaime as he had been, once, but Jaime as he had become. Jaime doubting, loathing, _enduring_ her the way she had endured Robert.

If only Tyrion hadn’t killed her son. If only Tyrion hadn’t killed her father.

It was all supposed to be different. The people were supposed to love her the way they had loved Robert. They were fools, the peasants, because they cheered for spectacle and passing gifts of coins, and they didn’t care about the fact that the crown fell steadily into debt. She was supposed to help them realize that Robert had been a poor king, though they had been amused by him. They were supposed to cheer her. She was supposed to make things better than they had been since perhaps before Aerys.

_Why?_ she wondered. _Why should I care about what they want? Why should I try to please them at all? What have they done but test me? What have they done but make my life difficult?_

It was all supposed to be different.

_It was supposed to be exactly like this._

That little voice. That damned voice. She remembered. Melara had been frightened, but not Cersei.

_Gold their crowns, and gold their shrouds._

_A younger and more beautiful queen._

A younger and more beautiful queen. Westeros had seen so many of them. First she thought it must have been Sansa Stark who took Joffrey, and then it had to be Margaery Tyrell who stole Tommen. Now there was this other one. This other queen had stolen Jaime from her. She meant to take Cersei’s throne, too.

There was _always_ going to be a younger and more beautiful queen. Queens aged and queens faded, and there were queens waiting to replace them. That old witch didn’t know anything. Cersei had spent her life jumping at shadows, and it was for nothing.

_Gold their gowns, and gold their shrouds._

How had Maggy known about that? Three children. She married not the prince, but the king. Her husband sired bastards. Three children _dead_.

_A coincidence. No one is going to take your crown._

_Someone will. They will take your crown when you die. When your sins catch up with you. When the dragon queen and Sansa Stark team up and take Kings Landing for themselves._

When Daenerys Targaryen cut off Jaime’s head and stuck it on a spike, she would take the very last of what Cersei had loved. His beautiful head. His golden hair gone gray. She should have kept him by her side. Why had she sent him away? She should have locked him in his rooms under guard, kept him there beside her. No matter what he wanted. No matter how he looked at her with disgust. He would have been safe there. She should have been glad that he was there at all, instead of wanting _more_ from him. No one would have stopped him from sleeping in her bed. No one would have stopped him from fucking her.

His accusing eyes. His distant gaze. _Yes, why_ wouldn’t _you want him here_? _He was obviously so pleased to be with you._

_Shut up. Shut up. Jaime loves me._

_Jaime isn’t coming back._

_You sent him away too many times._

Qyburn was waiting for her orders. He was staring at her. She wondered what she looked like. Did she look mad? Did she look as if she was thinking everything over? Her father used to lapse into silence and stare into the fire, and men thought it a sign of his genius. What would they think of her?

Qyburn was waiting. They were _all_ waiting. Didn’t they see that there was nothing she could do? There was no way out of this maze. She had trapped them all. Why did they think _she_ knew the way out?

But she could not allow them to see her weakness. They would take everything from her if they knew.

“The pyromancers,” she said.

“Yes, your grace,” Qyburn said. He understood immediately what she wanted. He always did.

“Good,” she said. “If Euron Greyjoy doesn’t show himself, we’ll have to think of another plan.”

“Of course, your grace,” Qyburn said. He recognized a dismissal when he heard one. She liked him for that, though she found she liked him for little else, lately.

_There was always going to be a younger and more beautiful queen,_ she told herself again. _That old witch was nothing but a fraud. You have nothing to be afraid of._

_Jaime will be dead. Your family will all be dead._

_Not Tyrion. Tyrion is still alive, and he will stop at nothing to end you. He told you. He warned you he would take everything._

“You can try to take it,” Cersei whispered. She stared into the fire. She could imagine the shape of the dragons in the flames, if she looked closely enough. Tyrion laughing while her children burned. Laughing while Jaime burned. He would not have her, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Down on your Knees by Flora Cash


	49. Jaime VI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The army sets out for Winterfell, and Jaime rides with Brienne.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've decided to just post chapters as I edit them, so some days it might be 2 chapters, some days it might be 5. It all depends on how I'm getting along! This chapter took a bit longer than I expected to edit, but hopefully the others will be quicker?

Jaime had known from the start of the trip that it would be a miserable affair to ride a horse from Dragonstone to Winterfell. All that time. All those weeks of travel. He understood the logic of the long march. He understood the reasoning and even relished in the fact that they were going to liberate Riverrun on the way north. It wasn’t even that he _liked_ the idea of being in a ship all the way to White Harbor. But as a man still recovering from a grievous injury, spending weeks in a saddle and sleeping every night on the hard ground would surely be a trial.

The alternative, of course, was to post up in a wagon or litter or carriage of some kind, but he could not endure that a second time. He had capitulated to Tyrion’s nerves and Brienne’s insistence for the trip from Highgarden to Dragonstone, and another journey like it would surely be far worse for his mental state, even if it would be better for his physical injuries.

Tyrion had seemed unlikely to budge on allowing him to ride to Winterfell on his own, but Brienne was softer, and her voice added to Jaime’s own complaints had done the trick and convinced Tyrion to relent. Not that Brienne had shown Jaime much softness since his unlucky confession. An aloof kindness and a wary sort of affection, yes, but she was constantly on guard around him now, her defenses always up, and he had no idea how to fix it. That was one reason to skip the carriage, though it was hardly the most pressing; no, that honor belonged to Olenna Tyrell.

The ride from Highgarden had been a humiliating ordeal for many reasons. Uncomfortable enough on its own, bumpy and slow and jarring his injuries so much that he would have probably been better off _walking_ , but it was the company that made it truly intolerable. Brienne had ridden ahead, occasionally dropping back to check in on him, speaking only ever in that new, stiff way she had. Olenna Tyrell had been his only constant companion in that cramped, hot, overly perfumed space. She confessed to poisoning Joffrey’s wine, and Jaime confessed to not giving much of a shit. It wasn’t _all_ misery. She was an amusing woman, and she told a few stories about his father that Tywin, because they were embarrassing, would have hated to hear recalled. But Jaime was as close to Cersei as Olenna could get, and so of course she delighted in making him squirm with allusions and jokes that weren’t jokes and specific reminders of moments of Cersei’s cruelty, watching him like a particularly ancient bird of prey for defensive flare-ups that he was too tired to give her.

She was sharp-tongued and merciless with him, and it got _worse_ when she saw how Jaime sighed when Brienne very politely stuck her head in and afterward left again despite his best attempts to keep her attention. The old bat was too easily amused, and she saw too much. A horse far away from her carriage was what he wanted for this second trip.

And besides. _Brienne_ would be riding a horse, and he had a vague hope of thawing some of her awkward coldness by reminding her that they _did_ actually like each other, even if she didn’t believe him yet about love. The ride from Harrenhal to Kings Landing had been grim enough, but they had passed it in conversation that grew steadily _friendly_ , and perhaps a renewal of that friendship would help her now. He remembered how it started out of some annoyance that made him desperate to crack her unyielding outer shell. Or perhaps to understand exactly what it was that had driven him into that bear pit to rescue her. He had goaded her into conversation the first time, and the second, and then a third, until finally she no longer needed to be goaded into anything. She told him about the man who taught her to fight. He told her about being knighted by Arthur Dayne. When they heard about Catelyn Stark’s death, some of her spirit had faded away, and he had been _sorry_ to see it go. That didn’t stop him from goading her back into conversation yet again. She could be a miserable conversational partner, but there was something fascinating about her to him, even then, long before he would have called it love.

He had injured her trust in him with his choices on the battlefield, and with his stupid blabbering mouth in Highgarden. But she still liked him well enough to remain his friend, and so he would do his best to fix what he had broken. He wasn’t very good at that. Good at breaking things, yes, but the fixing always seemed to elude him. Maybe that was just because he usually didn’t care enough to try. He had lived most of his adult life letting the people of Kings Landing hate and scorn him for saving their lives because it was easier to laugh it off and pretend it didn’t bother him than it would have been to defend himself. Maybe the same was true now. It would be easier to let Brienne think that his mind had been addled by the medicine and by his injuries. It would be easier to let things heal between them naturally. Forget he said anything. Let her come to trust him again at her own speed. But this time, he felt a compulsion to _try_. And he had never been very good at not giving in to compulsions.

So he mounted his horse, and he joined Brienne on the road, and he thought to himself that if she could feel how uncomfortable and in pain he was, she would have no cause to doubt his love. _It’s all for you_ , he would say, quite gallantly, and she would frown at him and bully him back into the carriage with Olenna Tyrell. So he stayed silent and rode with his back up very straight and made sure to only grimace when she wasn’t looking.

She was riding the horse that she had ridden into the Lannister camp at Riverrun. The one he had sent back to her with Bronn that night, after she and the others had got away. It made him smile in the same way her armor did, or Oathkeeper at her hip and in her hand. Some pride that he never thought he had, brought simmering out of him. _I gave her that horse. That armor. That sword_. He had heard men talk of adorning their mistresses in silk and jewels. He wondered if those men felt like this when they saw those women wearing their tokens. He wanted to laugh at the thought.

More and more he felt the impulse to laugh, to tease, to be as sarcastic as was once second nature to him. It had bled out of him bit by bit after he lost his hand. What little mirth there was had grown harsher. _Everything_ had grown harsher, edged with pain and panic and grief that no one seemed to understand. A loss of himself, of his identity, of everything he thought he was. But it was back in him now, the inclination to laugh at everything. The urge to tease Brienne, both as the woman he wanted and as the friend he adored. The sunlight helped, the first day of their trip blessed by its warming presence. He felt so few shackles tying him still to his sister. A tug, an instinctive pull at his core, at the man he used to be. It was so easy to ignore it. It was so easy now to understand why he had to. It felt like saving himself, and it was so against his instincts, but he _wanted_ to. _A good man_ , Brienne called him, like it was obvious. He wanted to be.

“Where’s the Blackfish in all this, anyway?” he asked. Brienne glanced over at him. Her expression seemed to Jaime to be a mixture of tolerant and confused. Confused that he was so cheerful or confused that he was asking about the Blackfish, of all people. He couldn’t tell.

It was going to be a long few weeks if she regarded every one of his attempts at conversation with so much suspicion.

“He is in the Vale,” she told him, after a pause during which she stared at him long enough to make him vaguely self-conscious. _And that’s enough questions from you_ , her tone said. She looked to the front again. She was keeping a constant eye on Robb and Daenerys where they rode at the head of the party. Robb had insisted that he wanted to ride with Daenerys alone so that they could speak, and so Brienne and Podrick and Davos had been banished further back. Jaime was glad for it. She would never have spoken to him if she was riding with Robb.

Brienne had not _avoided_ him since he confessed his love to her. No, she had returned to his rooms again and again, and she had checked on his progress, and she had smiled and even laughed with him in a way that was entirely unfamiliar to their relationship before the battle. They had spent long stretches just _talking_ , which he never thought they’d do; she was so taciturn most of the time. So withdrawn. But something had changed between them. She understood what he needed in a way that even _he_ hadn’t. She told him of her childhood on Tarth. He told her about some of his earliest tourneys. She shared secrets, and he shared his.

She hadn’t avoided him at all. She had supported him, deepened their friendship, sat beside his bed on his worst days and held his hand or his stump like the two were interchangeable. But she had avoided _it_. The topic. The very mention of it. He’d _tried_ , a few times. Quiet, probing attempts to remind her. Or clarify. Or just _confirm_ that she heard and understood what he had been saying when he told her in his awful, clumsy way that he loved her. She had dodged him effortlessly every time. Sometimes it was nearly seamless, and sometimes it was hilariously obvious, and always it made him love her more.

He was sure she _had_ loved him. His own feelings had been difficult to figure out, mostly because he had been too big an idiot to understand them, but hers had been plain to see. She had worn them in her expression, and she had worn them in her reluctance to stand against him, and she had worn them nearly every time she had spoken to him since she ran him through with the sword he had given her. But whether those feelings had faded or if they were just newly odious to her after what he had done, it was clear that they had changed.

But then he ran into her in the hall one day, as he was trying to find his way to the kitchens for something to eat. She stared at him openly. She held her sword tight. He realized that it was the first time she had seen him in Highgarden outside his room. Walking around and not confined to his bed or one of the chairs in his quarters.

“You look…better,” she said, surprised, and Jaime had smiled at her. He couldn’t help it. Everything about her made him smile of late. Tyrion seemed to think he was sunk into some kind of agony over her lack of reciprocation, and maybe it _was_ a bit painful, but mostly it was just so _funny._ He had wasted so much time in loving someone who would never fully love him in return. Not as himself, anyway. Not as anything other than a mirror. And now that he had finally begun to love someone else, someone who _would_ be able to give him all of her heart, he was at a loss. He knew how to be charming. He had never been anything but handsome. And yet those gifts seemed to mean nothing to Brienne. They seemed instead to make her even warier. Almost repulsed. They were all he had, and yet she was made so uncomfortable by them that even _trying_ to deploy them would likely make her sprint in the other direction.

“I am better,” he had answered her, his voice as calm and kind as he could make it. “And the injury isn’t nearly so hideous. Would you like to see it?”

“No,” she had replied. Short and clipped and irritated with him. He had laughed at her. She had turned away, but stopped herself. Lingering, though it was clear she wanted to flee. “I’m sorry. If I have been…if my reaction was…” An acknowledgement of it at last. He knew it for what it was, though she didn’t say it in so many words.

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” he had replied. For once, he seemed to know exactly what to say to her. “I apologize if my words made you uncomfortable.”

Perhaps it should have hurt more. Perhaps he should have despaired of Brienne ever believing him. But oddly the strongest sensation of all was _hope_.

They had time now, and he felt free in a way he perhaps had _never_ felt before. His family had always been a wedge between them. His family, and Cersei in particular. Brienne had wanted so much better for him than he knew how to want for himself, and it was only now that he had been bled of Cersei’s influence that he could recognize the way she always used to look at him. _You are a good man_ , she would tell him. _You are a man of honor_. There had often been a pleading quality to her words, and now he understood the part that had always remained unspoken: _despite all the choices you have made_.

Yes, Brienne had always believed in him, but she had also always _known_ him, and that required knowing his failures. That she knew them and loved him anyway wasn’t something he had understood until now, until almost too late. But now he _did_ understand. It was not what he had ever understood love to be: acceptance. Patience. Care. Of course those things were love, but love for him had always been the harshest parts of his passion for Cersei, and not the gentler pieces he craved when he had enough awareness to want for himself.

He should have felt more urgent, more despairing, more desperate prove his affections. They were perhaps marching to their deaths. He was quite convinced, anyway, that _he_ would be. He had been granted too many chances, and surely the dead would manage to do what Brienne of Tarth had not. He should be consumed with terror. He should try to set everything right in his last days. Instead, he was content. He was outside, and the sun was shining on him, and he was traveling with Brienne to Winterfell. He was leaving Kings Landing behind. He was leaving _Cersei_ behind, and he didn’t feel conflicted or torn anymore. He was finally going to fight for something that he would _choose_ to fight for. He wished that Brienne understood just how much it meant to him, and he wished that she understood just how much of it was due to her.

Her sword in his gut and those long weeks of recovery with her at his side, yes. His fear and sickness when his desperation finally faded and he realized how close he had come to throwing everything away. The second chance she had given him by refusing to kill him when he thought that there was nothing left for him to do but die. All of those things meant that he owed her. But it was more than just that. It was all of their acquaintance, and the way she always pushed him to be and do and _think_ better. Brienne had had more influence on his life than he had ever realized, long before he was willing to admit it. Returning to Kings Landing after he lost his hand, he had thought that it was only Cersei who had changed. But he had been different, too.

 _It’s because they took my hand_ , he thought at first. _I am not me without it._ But that wasn’t all. It was Brienne, too. Her presence, her friendship, her goodness leeching into him and changing him. Or maybe not _changing_ him. Reminding him of the man he used to long to be. Giving him an excuse to try and become that man again. _Believing_ in him, believing that he could be that man even when he was convinced that it was too late to be anything but hateful. 

* * *

“You know,” he said, later that day, after they had stopped for a meal and then got back on their horses again. “I expected you to be a bit more enthusiastic. You told me once that you used to dream of an adventure like this.”

Brienne glanced at him. No smile at the corners of her mouth. No smile in her eyes, either. She looked wearier than she had before the break. He worried.

“Brienne,” he said.

“No one is paying much attention,” she said. She looked away from him. Her back was straight. Her gaze was rigid, directed ahead of her. “When we stop for the night, you could make your escape. Head back to King’s Landing. If you rode hard enough, you might be able to outrun them.”

His stomach twisted. Sank. He stared at her until her face flushed red, aware of his eyes on her even if she wouldn’t meet them. He realized that he was glowering. Was he angry? He wasn’t sure if it was more anger or hurt he felt, but they seemed to go hand-in-hand.

“I’m not going _back_ ,” he insisted. She allowed her eyes to meet his at last, too surprised by his tone to keep them away. Her gaze flickered over him as if trying to read him. Interpret his wants and his feelings from a single glance.

“Are you worried she’ll be angry that you lost?” she asked. That question hurt even worse.

“I don’t _care_ how she feels about my losses. It isn’t about that. I don’t _want_ to go back. I want to go north. I thought you knew that…I want to fight for the living. I want to lead the remains of my men in fighting for the Starks, and I want to make up for my crimes against their family by protecting them when it matters most. I want to be here, with you.” He watched her. Understood her. “You don’t believe me.”

Brienne hesitated. She was still looking at him oddly. Podrick was doing his best to outpace them so he would be able to pretend he hadn’t heard. Davos had suddenly disappeared. Jaime felt light, removed from himself. Empty.

“No,” Brienne admitted.

“Even about _this_?”

“Ser Jaime…”

“Ah, so it’s Ser Jaime again, is it?”

“Jaime, if you like.” Now she was angry too, and he was almost glad. At least he wasn’t the only one. “I know you love your sister. I know that you feel compelled to return to her now, when she needs you most.”

“I am not compelled by my sister any longer,” Jaime said. “I am not compelled by anyone but you.” Brienne didn’t look away as he had assumed she would. She started, as if he had said something shocking, but she didn’t look away. How could she not see? How could she not understand that he loved her? It had taken him so long to realize it, but he had always been an idiot about love. He had assumed she would be better. What a sorry pair they would make, if they ever made it any farther than this. “You’re going north for very honorable reasons, but I don’t need them. I’m going north for you. I’m going north because the man you think I am would go north to do the right thing.”

“You’re going north because it _is_ the right thing.”

“See? Exactly.”

“Please don’t…”

She bit off her last words, and Jaime waited, one eyebrow arched.

“Don’t what? Speak so loudly? You’ve said nothing foolish; I’m the only one making an ass of myself. Or would you perhaps like me to stop being so obvious? Or is it even that you wish I wouldn’t follow you north like some eager, panting mutt? I admit it paints a rather pathetic picture. Would you rather I return to my sister to be burned alive when Daenerys sets her sights south? Or do you think things will go so poorly in the north that I will be safer with Cersei on the throne while the rest of you stubborn warriors try to save us _cowards_ from the end of the world?”

She was conscious now, at least, that she had hurt him. He could see her realizing it. She sighed.

“Forgive me,” she said.

“There’s nothing to forgive. If anything, it should be me asking for your forgiveness, but I find myself growing short every time you accuse me of something. However much I have earned your doubt and your scorn.”

“You haven’t. I am only…wary.”

“Yes. I know that. You cannot believe me. Not about this. Not about…other things I have said.”

She flushed even deeper. She continued to stare straight ahead, at the unruly mane of Robb Stark’s curls. Jaime felt vaguely, horrifically self-conscious. Maybe her affections had changed after so long apart. She had loved him once, but that was when he was the only man who had ever shown her any friendship, by her own admission. There were other options, now. People were finally realizing what a wonder she was. Perhaps she preferred a younger man. She had loved Renly, who was young, and who had always been too pretty for his own good. Jaime had been pretty once, he was sure, but he’d grown more weathered. Perhaps he wasn’t as handsome as he used to be. _Robb_ was handsome. He was young, too. Younger than Brienne, but perhaps that was what she wanted. Perhaps she didn’t want some old, crippled oathbreaker following her around.

“No,” she admitted. “I cannot believe you. Not yet.”

The _yet_ so quiet, so drawn out of her, as if she was unwilling to say it but unwilling to keep silent, too. No word had ever been such a relief.

“I have some work to do, then,” he said. She shook her head. He could see amusement now, though. She was confused by his attentions, but she trusted him at least enough that she didn’t assume he was making sport of her. “Would it help if I told you that I informed Robb and Daenerys of the wildfire?”

“The wildfire? Didn’t Tyrion tell them? And your sister already blew up the sept. I think they might have known about the wildfire from that.”

“I can never tell if you’re being amusing on purpose. My sister had been ordering more of it made by the time I left for Highgarden. She wanted caches of it. Just like Aerys. No plans to use them yet, but that doesn’t mean she won’t. She was growing more paranoid. She pretended at feeling powerful, but I knew she was frightened. I told myself that I would do something about it when I returned. Reason with her, perhaps. Or try and remove her from the throne if I could not. I probably wouldn’t have done anything.”

“You can’t know that.”

“You have to admit it would be consistent.” Brienne didn’t argue. Just sighed. He said, “I told them not to attack the city directly with dragon fire. Even if they manage to get the people out beforehand, the wildfire could be anywhere. She may be willing to lay a trap while using innocents as bait. Wildfire could take the whole city out if she has enough of it. You should have seen what it did to the sept.”

He thought of the view from Cersei’s balcony. The sept still smoking. He imagined her standing there, watching it. Smiling. _Just like Aerys_. He looked down at his hand on the reins, and at his maimed arm resting beside it. His stump was ugly and naked, the skin still gnarled and scarred. He had thought of wrapping it in something to hide it, but leaving it bare felt like defying Cersei, and sometimes looking at it was oddly what he needed to feel whole.

“It was good to warn them,” Brienne said softly, and he felt the pleasure of her approval tingle through him, the way it always did. He nodded, but didn’t raise his eyes.

“I’m glad you think so.” He waited, but she was silent, giving him time to think. He spoke, instead. “I don’t want her on the throne.”

Brienne glanced about to make sure that no one else was near. No one was; Brienne may have been oblivious to it, but most people saw the way he looked at her and stayed well enough away from their conversations. They jeered and called her _Kingslayer’s Whore_ and he _The Beast Woman’s Pet_ , but not where either of them were supposed to hear. They were careful about that, at least.

“You cannot stop Daenerys from taking the throne, Jaime,” Brienne said. Jaime rolled his eyes.

“You must be doing this on purpose.”

“Doing what?”

“Being oblivious. I refuse to accept that it’s natural. My _sister_. I don’t want my sister on the throne.” She looked at him. He knew she didn’t know what to say. “I don’t want her to suffer. I don’t even want her to _die_ , but I know she won’t give up the throne easily, and I don’t want her to rule. The throne has destroyed her. It destroyed my family. It destroys everyone who touches it.”

“That’s not true,” Brienne said. He laughed at her.

“I know I don’t need to tell _you_ of all people that life is not a song, my lady. Surely you’ve learned _that_ by now.”

“It has nothing to do with that. There have been good queens and good kings.”

“And good knights and good ladies, too. There have also been bad. And even those very good kings and queens have been softened by the years and the stories. It isn’t the starving peasants who write histories. It isn’t the conquered nations, either. It’s the acolytes and worshippers, and they leave things out. The Targaryens have such a glowing historical record, written by the people who flourished under their rule. You can’t _really_ think that we know the whole truth? Time obscures all of it. Tell me, when you paint me as an honorable man to the people you meet, do you tell of the wicked things I’ve done to balance it out, or do you insist only in sharing the honorable?”

She blushed. It was answer enough.

“I take your point,” she said.

“Daenerys may mean well. I don’t know. Aerys probably meant well once. I would say it must be my age that’s made me cynical, but people far older than me fall for the same traps that the naivety of the young allows them to stumble into. I imagine you’ll be the same when you tell _my_ tale after I’m gone. Stubbornly clinging to memories of an honorable man even when you know your recollection to be prettier than the reality.”

Her expression when she looked at him was so annoyed as to be almost _offended_ , and he laughed.

“I don’t expect I’ll live much longer,” he continued. “Either I’ll try and fight the dead with my off-hand and take a sword from a walking corpse less invested in my survival than my _last_ opponent, or I’ll survive somehow and be executed alongside my sister when the dragon queen takes her throne.”

“And you think I would allow that to happen?” Brienne asked. He hated how low his stomach swooped at the possessive edge of her voice.

“If she ordered it, you wouldn’t have a choice. I killed her father. I supported my sister. I harmed the Starks, as well, and if their alliance is turning more personal, as anyone with eyes can see, executing the Lannister twins together would be a smart choice.”

“I would not allow it,” she said again. It was so easy to imagine. Brienne calling for a trial by combat. Standing as his champion. She’d probably fight one of those bloody dragons for him. She’d probably fight all three.

“And I would not allow you to risk your life for mine,” he said sincerely. Brienne looked away. He could see the way her cheeks pinked. She liked when he was earnest with her. He smiled. “Promise me,” he said. “If it comes to that…”

“I will not,” Brienne said. He laughed again.

“You don’t even know what I was going to ask!”

“You were going to ask me to be the one to _do the honors_ ,” she sneered. His smile softened.

“No. I’ve learned my lesson on that. I was going to ask you to swear not to do anything foolish. And if it has to happen, I was going to ask you not to watch.”

She was startled by that. Her expression cracked at last. That cold warrior’s mask she had worn around him of late. He had become adept at seeing behind it, because he watched her so carefully, but now he would not need the skill. Her brow pulled down. Her mouth opened. Her eyes narrowed. Her chin quivered just slightly, the way it had when she left Kings Landing.

“You will not die,” she said.

“You cannot stop it,” he pointed out. She shook her head.

“I have so far,” she replied, and he laughed again.

“You’ve done a fine job. But even _you_ can’t do the impossible. Brienne. I’m not the fighter I used to be. I’m not the man I used to think I _would_ be when I was given a knighthood. I have wasted all the chances I have been given. I’m not anything anymore. I’m not Kingsguard. I’m not my sister’s thrall. I’m not the Lion of Casterly Rock. I’m an old soldier with one hand who just wants to follow one more good commander into one more good battle before he dies. That it’s with you is…” he broke off, willing her to believe him. She was watching him like she wanted to, but also like she couldn’t. He thought of what he had said to her about stories. _You of all people should know that life is not a song._ How many men had earnestly begged her for her affections? How many men had plainly and without poor intentions told her that they loved her? He imagined it likely wasn’t many. They were all fools, as he had been once.

No, she didn’t believe him. But he was alive, and free, and the sun was warm despite the falling flakes of snow. Winter arriving at last. She didn’t believe him, but she loved him, and she wouldn’t turn him away.

There wasn’t much time to convince her. He truly did believe he would die in the battle to come. But there were weeks left on the road. He would find a way to make her believe him eventually.

He smiled at her, and she smiled back. Hesitant, but true. It would be enough for now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Dear Wormwood by the Oh Hellos


	50. Robb VIII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robb watches a confrontation between Brienne, Tyrion, and Jaime at the campfire, and it helps him come to terms with his growing relationship with Daenerys.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> why is this chapter 6k words? HOW is it 6K words? I swear it was 3K last time I checked. Am I truly losing it? Christ. Anyway here's chapter 2 of the day! Don't @ me about politics or Robb or anything please. I've told you before that I don't care lmao

Daenerys rode a pretty grey mare as they traveled from Dragonstone back to Winterfell. Robb had suggested, along with several of her advisors, that she might be more comfortable flying ahead and waiting in Winterfell for the armies to arrive, but she had only laughed at them. She would ride at the head of her army. _Now, more than ever, it is important that they have faith in me,_ she said. Her voice had been strong and sure, and none had argued with her _._

Robb was glad to have her near, of course. She smiled at him every time she looked his way and found that he was already looking back at her. She looked up to the sky and watched her dragons wheeling above, playing in the clouds. They could be heard roaring sometimes, and Robb knew that their party would not meet much trouble on the road from bandits.

Riding one of them had been indescribable. Now that he was back on the ground, it seemed impossible to him that he had done it. He could remember it so clearly, could remember his fear and the way his stomach swooped low and the sharp slap of the wind against his face, and yet it was as if it was something that had happened in a dream. Like the trees in the fog and the image of Bran trying to speak to him and the other formless nightmares that eventually left him with time. Except this hadn’t been a nightmare at all. 

Davos had asked, once Robb and Daenerys returned from Winterfell, what it had been like. Brienne had been icy and disappointed and refused to ask any questions, but Davos had been like a child. Curious and a bit giddy about it. Robb had been honest—it was only fun for a few hours, and then it started to feel like riding a very tall, very scary horse. Slightly more uncomfortable, and infinitely more dangerous. But the distance they were able to cover in so short a time...

And Daenerys. She came alive on the back of her dragon. She had shown off a bit, urging Drogon to dip and weave and spin while Robb clung to her and she laughed delightedly. On the way back from Winterfell, with their regard well established, he had used it as an excuse to press his face against her neck, make her shiver.

But when they returned to Dragonstone, they also returned to their responsibilities, and Robb remembered. Not only because his sworn sword was so angry with him, although of course Brienne’s ire served as a sharp reminder. Mostly it was just that everything was different. There was no more time to negotiate at their own pace. They were at the mercy of their advisors and the voice of Sansa that lived now in Robb's head, reminding him of the promises he had made the night before he left Winterfell.

Promises and tears and apologies. It had been difficult without Jon to mediate, and though Robb had been frightened at first of causing Sansa anymore hurt, the conversation had been smoother than their first about the subject. Sansa spoke her mind, and he spoke his, and it was as if they had existed, for a brief time, in a world apart from everyone else. A world where the past could not hurt them and the future would not matter. He spoke of his losses, of his choices, of his regrets. She spoke of choice more as a lack, and she cried as she remembered the things she said and did when she was too young to know better.

She had shown him, with trembling fingers pushing up her sleeves, some of the scars that she had been left with, and then they both had cried. In the light of day, they’d suffered a shared embarrassment to meet each other’s eyes, because there was something about their relationship that felt too fragile for open weeping in one another’s arms, and yet that was exactly what they had done. He felt better about it now. Felt better about a lot of things, but he felt more clear with Sansa than he had. He could hear her voice and he could understand her arguments. She sounded strong and sure in his head. He had already been resolved to negotiate as carefully as he could, to ensure the continued safety of his family, but he felt less nervous about the outcome now. He wouldn’t fail. Not again.

He was glad with what he had managed, and he knew that Daenerys had respect for his position now in a way she hadn’t before. They worked out most of what they would try to accomplish on the flight back from Winterfell, and Robb holed up with Davos immediately on their return, making certain that his Hand was prepared for negotiations with Tyrion.

The wedding would help, but Jon was right. It wasn’t only words that would ensure his sister’s safety. He would make sure that she, along with the rest of his family, would have the closest thing to an independent north that Daenerys would be willing to grant, and he made sure that they would feel safe in their own home. He had been afraid that he tipped his hand too much by admitting his feelings for Daenerys. He had been afraid that she would not hesitate to use those feelings, or to _try_ to use those feelings, to try and make him give up more than he wanted to give.

But there was no mistaking her hand in things. Tyrion was frustrated, and he drove a hard bargain, but he was softer than he would have been otherwise. It was easy to see that Daenerys wanted things to proceed in the same way Robb did.

They proceeded quickly enough. Though Robb knew he was at a disadvantage, having fewer people to advise him and less power overall, Davos proved a good asset to have at his side. Brienne, too—once she was speaking to him again—proved an excellent friend to have, as ever, though she continued to doubt herself when it came to negotiations and discussions about power.

In the end, each party was as satisfied as they could be, and Robb felt a thrill of confidence that had become unfamiliar to him. It was a good reminder to have–he _could_ actually do this. He could be a good king. It wasn’t _all_ failure.

All while they negotiated and talked and compromised over things that seemed unimportant next to the dead, like titles and names and crowns and succession, the secret of Jon’s status hung there. When he eventually used it, it had exactly the impact Jon said it would. Daenerys was concerned, angry, but eventually pleased when she realized that Jon’s legitimacy meant that the Targaryen line would not need to die with her, even if she was right about being unable to bear children. She was even more pleased when Robb told her in no uncertain terms that Jon had no plans to challenge her for the crown.

After that, things halted until they could get back to Winterfell, but Robb felt lighter. Preparations for the journey flew by. They were constantly busy. That was the strangest part; after weeks of careful talks, there was suddenly no longer any time for conversation. There was only time to plan, and prepare, and march. It would take them weeks to make the journey that he and Daenerys had made in several days, but it felt somehow felt like it would be over far sooner.

They would be marching against the _dead_. Many of the soldiers had taken to calling it _The Last War_ , which wasn’t exactly good for morale, but Robb couldn’t deny the accuracy of the feeling. A last war. A last stand. There were times when Robb turned in for the night—often _late_ into the night—when the weight of it, the responsibility, the uncertainty, became almost too much to bear.

Most of the soldiers had already begun the march back to Dragonstone from Highgarden by the time Robb and Daenerys returned from Winterfell. The hostage Lannister army and the remains of the Tyrell forces were still lingering with most of the Dothraki and several companies of Unsullied as their guards. Almost all of the Lannisters had pledged to serve Daenerys, which Olenna Tyrell was quite smug about. Jaime Lannister had, with very little fuss or ceremony, declared his men for the Targaryen queen, and none of them seemed disposed to break with him. Olenna would be making the journey to Riverrun; the remaining Frey loyalists there would be turned out shortly by Brynden Tully and an army from the Vale, along with the first waves of the Unsullied, who would meet with them outside the castle. Edmure Tully would be re-installed as lord of Riverrun, and none of them had any doubt that he would welcome any of the dragon queen’s people who would not make the march north. Everything was progressing nicely, and Robb had no complaints, except…

It had been _different_ , when it was just the two of them.

Being back at Dragonstone reminded Robb that he was still a king beholden to his people. It reminded him yet again that Daenerys wasn’t just a woman, but a queen who commanded a massive army and three dragons. They still knew so little about her, and even what seemed like a good alliance could turn out to be a dangerous one in time. She was a _Targaryen_! Her father had burned his grandfather and uncle, and there was nothing to stop her from doing the same. He didn’t want to think about those sayings about Targaryens and their propensity for madness; he cared deeply about _two_ Targaryens, and he wanted to believe that those stories were just that. He could hope that the _madness_ in their blood was ambition and greed and the paranoia of challenged rule as opposed to a diseased mind. He could tell himself those things, and he could convince himself not to worry, but he had to acknowledge the possibility that it could all be a _mistake_. He had made fatal errors before. He could not afford to be pulled in by her beauty and by his feelings. He had been so sure that he wasn’t. He had been convinced that they were simply lucky, and of a similar mind, and that their marriage would solve problems in addition to being the thing he wanted.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t still sure that he was right. It wasn’t that he was having doubts about her. But that was the problem; it would be so easy to be a fool about her. It would be so easy for him to fuck everything up again by trusting too much that she wasn’t playing him in exactly the right way.

He had watched as Daenerys greeted Jorah Mormont, who had arrived in Dragonstone when she and Robb were in Winterfell. Robb knew of Jorah, knew that Daenerys cared for the former smuggler deeply, and that she had missed him while he was gone. He saw the way Jorah’s eyes glimmered, and the way Daenerys held him close.

Davos teased him about jealousy, after, apparently sensing something in the way that Robb was watching the reunion. But it wasn’t jealousy that Robb felt. It was wariness, more than anything else. It was easy to see the way Daenerys inspired devotion, and now _he_ was planning to marry her. Was he just the latest in a line of men to fall for the beautiful dragon queen, with her guileless eyes and her kind smiles? Was he a tool to her? Had she seen his weaknesses and his wants and used them against him?

She had fought for years to get to Westeros. She had sacrificed everything. He’d heard her describe it many times. Even in that first disastrous meeting, he’d been quite able to see the spine of steel that existed beneath the pomposity that her advisors had convinced her to wear like armor. He had thought that their second meeting was a glimpse at her true self, but what if it wasn’t?

 _Gods_ , he wondered. _Why does anyone want to be king? Why does anyone want to rule anything?_ It was all so fucking complicated. All he wanted was to be in Winterfell with his family. It was all he had wanted after he returned and found that his siblings did not hate him, that they welcomed him, that they wanted him back. And then he had traveled to a cold castle on a cold island and he met a woman with so much fire that it filled the hole that had been inside him since he watched his wife die.

Had he been so easily won?

He watched her as she rode. Brienne was somewhere behind him; he could hear the Kingslayer’s voice needling her into short, sharp bursts of conversation. Jorah Mormont was probably somewhere near them, watching Robb as carefully as Brienne had been watching Daenerys of late. There were eyes on both of them up here, at the front of the column, as there had been eyes on them from the beginning of the ride. It was more important than ever that they look united.

Daenerys was looking up at the sky. Laughing. Robb’s eyes followed and saw the way her three dragons played together. They weren’t as frightening so high up, and her laugh made her girlish. Young. He cared for her deeply, and he worried about that care. It had cost him so much last time. Jon had seemed surprised when he asked if Robb thought the answer was to never open his heart again. Never give in to love. Prove his loyalty to his family by swearing off anything stronger than friendship. But… _yes_ , Robb had wanted to say. _Yes, obviously. That’s the only thing that makes sense._

Daenerys caught his eye again, and she smiled at him again. She was made softer by her smiles. Softer, and warmer too. They hadn’t shared another kiss since the one on the walls of Winterfell. There hadn’t been time, and both Brienne and Grey Worm had been reluctant to leave them alone again, especially together, convinced that they would take the opportunity to vanish again.

Robb could remember the way that she had laughed at herself on the walls at Winterfell, Sansa’s borrowed cloak too long and too big. She had looked up at him, and her eyes had sparkled with amusement. She hadn’t been a queen, then, and he hadn’t been a king. He would have wanted to kiss her anyway. Would she have wanted to kiss him?

He smiled back at her.

 _It’s happening again,_ he told himself. _You’re failing again._

 _This is different,_ he promised.

* * *

They stopped for the night and set up camp. This was the closest they would get to Kings Landing, and so the preparations were tense, and quiet, and the guard rotations much more populated than they had been the other nights. Varys was certain that Cersei hadn’t moved her armies to intercept them, but Tyrion was convinced that Varys was underestimating her, and so it was no surprise to Robb to see the guard details so heavy, especially around the captured Lannister soldiers.

Robb had forgotten how slowly an army could move, and Daenerys had more than just an army. Several companies continued on to clear the road ahead, but the majority of her people were non-fighting forces. Some had stayed at Dragonstone with a small garrison. Some had sailed to the Iron Islands to throw in with the Greyjoys. Most of her people were making the trek to at least Riverrun, and some would continue on to Winterfell to serve as nurses or stewards, or to fight in some capacity. Now, they were all together, clustered in a huge mass that seethed and moved slowly northward.

Jaime Lannister was arguing with his brother. Brienne watched them, though she pretended not to, like examining her stew as she ate it required all her concentration. The Lannister army was going to be camped on the outskirts with the Dothraki, and Robb gathered that Lannister wanted to camp with them.

“Let him,” Brienne said, interrupting Tyrion’s tirade. Robb hadn’t really been following the argument, but he found it strange that Lannister’s face fell, though Brienne had taken his part. The Kingslayer looked at her with what could only be described as betrayal, but it turned quickly to a sneer.

“Good,” he said. “If it will prove it to you, yes. You should let me camp with my men.”

Brienne rolled her eyes. Her skin darkened into a flush, and she went stubbornly back to her dinner. The Kingslayer lingered, ignoring his brother’s continued arguments that Jaime should be recovering in a real tent, _Tyrion’s_ tent, rather than slumming it with his soldiers. At _least_ , Tyrion argued, he should be in the infirmary tent with the rest of the wounded. Jaime was far better than he had been, but he still wasn’t back to his strength. Robb grew more amused as the one-sided conversation continued. Tyrion had yet to notice that his big brother wasn’t listening; Jaime was too intent on trying to meet Brienne’s eyes. On any other man, it might have looked pathetic, but it was _Jaime Lannister_ , and he somehow made even desperate pining look attractive.

It was hard to laugh, anyway, because Robb had to wonder: _am I any better?_

At least Daenerys openly returned his affections. Robb knew Brienne cared for the Kingslayer, but she had built up a wall between them since the battle at Highgarden. Robb had expected her to be joyous when Jaime renounced his sister and swore his armies to help their cause, but she had barely even smiled. She had nodded at him, and there was respect in her gaze, but there seemed to be little else. The Kingslayer had done all the smiling for her.

Daenerys at least returned Robb’s smiles. Encouraged them.

Then again, wasn’t that half the worry? That she was faking those? Brienne didn’t have the art to do that. Maybe that was why the Kingslayer looked so pleased every time he managed to win one, no matter how small it was.

Jaime finally stormed off, giving up on both Brienne and his brother, it seemed. Tyrion glared at Brienne and started towards her. Robb was briefly distracted by the sight of Daenerys exiting her tent with Grey Worm, Varys, Jorah, and Missandei. She spoke to each of them in turn. Calmly, quietly. They scattered to carry out whatever her orders had been.

“It’s not our place to keep him here,” Brienne was saying.

“He is a _prisoner_. It is exactly our place.”

“If he wants to go back to her, we aren’t...”

“I know you know the meaning of the word _prisoner_ , Lady Brienne, and yet you are being deliberately obtuse.”

“He’ll get himself killed trying to get back to her if we stop him,” Brienne said calmly, speaking over Tyrion’s ire as though it didn’t bother her, though Robb could see the tension in her back.

“You can’t be so heartless,” Tyrion said.

“ _Heartless_?” Brienne asked. “You’re naive!”

“Tyrion.”

Daenerys had appeared. She was smiling a questioning smile at her Hand. Brienne scrambled to her feet to offer a bow, with Podrick copying her a bit more slowly, and a bit more clumsily.

“Your grace,” Tyrion said, over the clatter of Podrick dropping his spoon against the stone he’d been seated on. “My brother seems determined to punish himself by sleeping with his men. I apologize for the raised voices.”

“No need for apology,” Daenerys said. Her expression was amused, if slightly stiff. “I’ll order him closely watched. If he means to escape, my men will stop him. Or perhaps my dragons. Either way, he won’t make it far enough to warn your sister, if that’s what you think he means to do.”

Brienne’s eyes flickered up from where she had trained them on the ground. Her brow clouded. Tyrion went silent. Robb tried to catch Brienne’s eye, but she would not remove her gaze from Daenerys.

“I’ll speak with him again,” Tyrion said, and he hurried away. Robb tensed, thinking that Daenerys would speak to Brienne, next. But if Daenerys had heard Brienne’s words about the inevitability of Jaime’s escape, she didn’t give any indication. She strode up to Robb instead.

“I’d like to speak with you as well,” she said gently. “I have a few more things to attend to. But you’ll find it comfortable to wait in my tent, I hope?”

Robb nodded. Daenerys smiled. She moved away, and Grey Worm followed. Brienne was gripping her spoon tight, staring after her.

“Maybe next time, leave the overseeing of prisoners to someone else,” Robb said, trying to joke. Brienne breathed out a strangled sound.

“I didn’t mean…” she started. Robb put a hand on her shoulder.

“I know,” he said. “I know you only want to protect him. But he can’t be allowed to leave. And he doesn’t _want_ to leave, anyway.”

She shook her head.

“He’s going to try to go back,” she said. Her voice was low and utterly certain. Robb wondered how it was possible to be so close to someone, to know someone so _well_ , and still fail to understand them so completely. 

* * *

Robb was still thinking of Brienne when he entered the tent. Daenerys traveled with more luxury than he was used to, but the inside of her personal tent was less opulent than he had expected. He liked it. It settled his nerves some after that odd conversation by the fire. The table in the center had a map with tokens on it, and he picked up one of the wolves that sat in Winterfell. He grimaced when he saw that she had placed a dragon there, as well. _Jon_. She would be disappointed if she expected Jon to be a dragon.

He was thinking of Brienne because Brienne was honorable, because she made the right choices, because she was blind. Anyone could see the way in which the Kingslayer sought her audience and approval, but Brienne continued to turn away. At first he thought her unfeeling, or perhaps simply too honorable to consider her own emotions when there was too much bad blood between the Lannisters and the Starks, but after the display at the fire, he knew exactly what it was: a lack of trust.

Assuming the worst. Believing the worst. It was a form of self-protection, and it was exactly what he was doing with Daenerys. Denying himself because he didn’t trust that something so good could happen to him. Or perhaps denying himself because he didn’t believe that he deserved it.

Brienne believed that Jaime Lannister would return to his sister despite all evidence to the contrary. They had passed closer to Kings Landing than they ever would when they were making the trek back to Dragonstone from Highgarden, and he hadn’t made the attempt _then_. His wounds were not so grievous that they would stop a man _truly_ determined to get back to the woman he loved. Robb remembered his fierceness from years ago, when he was imprisoned in the Stark camp. Jaime had fought against his captors. Killed his captors. He had done _anything_ to try and get back to his sister. Nobody had chained him up this time, and still he was staying. Why was Brienne so certain he would leave? Because it was easier to be certain of failure than it was to accept the terror of the possibility of success?

If he was right about Daenerys…it was too easy. He would love again. He would be making the right choice for his people. He would gain a strong ally. They would fight the dead and take Kings Landing. She would be a good queen. As a child, he would have had no problem believing in that kind of goodness if it appeared in one of Old Nan’s stories, but he wasn’t a child anymore, and he had become too used to the fact that life had no happy endings. He didn’t believe in those kinds of tales anymore. So he couldn’t _possibly_ be right about Daenerys.

And Brienne. She had been taunted and mocked and derided. He had heard the men in his own camp doing it. He had heard the men at Dragonstone and Highgarden doing the same. After the battle, some of that talk had died down, after she proved herself and fought better than any of them, but for some men, it only made them worse. A woman as tall and broad and unconventional as Brienne would have heard everything of scorn and of disgust, and not nearly enough of the kind of earnest longing that was reflected on Jaime Lannister’s face every time he looked at her. Why would she believe it? _How_ could she believe it? Robb had not known Cersei Lannister long, but he hadn’t _needed_ to know her to see how beautiful she was. How could Brienne convince herself that Jaime Lannister was choosing her when the world at every turn had told her that that would be impossible? 

And for Robb…what had Robb done to deserve the happiness that would come with a queen and a wife like Daenerys? What had Robb done to earn that? He hadn’t. He had made all the wrong choices and somehow blundered into success. Why _wouldn’t_ he be suspicious?

By the time Daenerys entered the tent alone to see him, his mind had been altered. Now she looked as soft as she ever had, and he could see things that he had not noticed before. The slight hesitation. The nervousness. The way she drew herself up taller when she saw him watching. Her smile was genuine, and it was a full smile, but he could see a trembling nervousness behind her eyes that he hadn’t noticed before.

She was nervous, too. She was putting faith in him, too. She had been burned before, same as he had, and she was slow to trust, same as him. Same as Brienne.

“Where are your handmaids?” he asked. She smiled at him. She moved to the other side of the table, standing across from him.

“In the next tent,” she said. “I wanted to talk to you, first. And it doesn’t do me any favors among your people, when they see me being pampered. It reminds them too much of their current queen.”

Robb nodded. He hadn’t thought of that, but of course that was something that Varys or Tyrion would have mentioned to her. He _had_ found it disconcerting, the first few times he spoke to her. There were always women around her, ready to take on any burden. Little things that she hardly even seemed to notice.

“If that’s the only thing that reminds them of Cersei, then you’re doing something right,” he said, which made her laugh. She toyed with one of the dragon figurines, which was placed on the road. “What’s wrong?” he asked her. She looked up at him, smiling a bit.

“Nothing is wrong. Everything is proceeding as planned.” She laughed again. “I’m just so tired of dealing with all of it. Aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he admitted. “You frightened Brienne out there.”

“If she really thinks her Kingslayer means to try and escape back to his sister, she _should_ be frightened.” Daenerys picked up the lion token that was with her dragon and his wolf. She nudged it closer to the front of the line. “Luckily, she’s wrong.”

“You have so much faith in him?” Robb asked. Daenerys arched an eyebrow at him, and he smiled. “I think you’re right. But I’m surprised to hear you say it.”

“Why? Because he killed my father? Maybe at one time that would have been the only thing that mattered, but…Tyrion was right. To remind me. I am not my father. I have no wish to be. But it isn’t about that, anyway. Jaime Lannister wants the same things we want: he wants to destroy the Night King. He wants to live a life he can be proud of. He wants to make up for his past mistakes. Everyone’s motivations have to be called into question in any other war, but not this one. This one’s simple.” She adjusted a few more of the tokens on the table, moving the Blackfish closer to Riverrun. _Optimistic_ , Robb thought, and it made him smile.

“Simple,” he repeated.

“Well, you know what I mean. In one sense of the word.”

She finally came around the table to stand in front of him, and she looked so different from the woman she had seemed to be out there, among her people. He felt cheered to see it. This version of Daenerys. The Daenerys he was allowed to see. It wasn’t this woman who was an act. It was her mask around the others that was false.

“I do,” he said.

“I wanted to speak to you, because I wanted to see you,” she said. “That’s simple, too. Tyrion and Varys can give me all the advice about dealing with you that they want. Jorah and Missandei are nearly as bad. But I don’t want them here right now. We don’t need everything to be a negotiation, do we?”

“We don’t,” Robb agreed, his smile growing. “Everyone is watching us. Always.”

“I had gotten used to it at one point, I think, but it feels different with you.” Daenerys was thoughtful as she looked at him, frowning. “Just one of many ways you’re different from any man I’ve been with. I don’t want them to have any part of this.” She seemed oddly shaken by it, delicate. He smiled, to let her know that he appreciated it. It felt like quite a lot of pressure, suddenly, to be the person that could make Daenerys Targaryen pause. To be the person who could make her forget her responsibilities and her duties. Who could make her want to escape the thing she had been fighting half her life to get, even if it was only a temporary escape in her tent for a few moments. There was a power in that. If he was a worse man, perhaps he would take advantage of that power. “It worries me too, sometimes,” she said, quiet. “That you come along so easily. You aren’t asking for very much.”

“I’m asking for what my family needs, and what my people expect of me,” Robb pointed out. “It’s not nothing.”

“No. It’s not. But another man…”

“Well, I’m not that man.”

“You aren’t. _Still_. Surely there must be something. It cannot be this easy.” She smiled at him suddenly, seeing something that must have fluttered across his expression. “I see you understand exactly.”

“It’s crossed my mind a few times that I should have been more wary from the start. But I’ve had a revelation just now.”

“Oh? About what?”

“You. I watched Brienne deny what was right in front of her, and I realized that sometimes…after everything we’ve been through, sometimes it’s easier to assume the worst. Assume the worst, even when the best possible outcome is staring you in the face. It’s easier to recover when you’ve braced for a blow, and that’s what we’re doing with each other: we’re constantly bracing for a blow that isn’t coming. I’m not asking for a lot, because I don’t _need_ a lot. My people, my family, they have their needs and their wants, and I will fight for them. But for me, for myself, I only need you to be a good queen and to rule the people well. Maybe that _is_ a lot.”

“And what if I’m not?” she asked. Her expression was difficult to read, as she moved away from him, back into the shadowed area of the tent, circling the table again, reminding him of the way her dragons flew in the clouds, wheeling overhead.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“If I turn out to be as mad as my father. All you’re asking for might be an awful lot.”

“You won’t.”

“Humor me.”

“I would try and help you,” he said. “I would try and keep you from hurting anyone.” It was the only thing he could think of to say.

“Even though I would be your queen?” she asked. His frown grew deeper. Where was this coming from?

“Yes,” he said. “If you proved unworthy.”

“Who decides what’s unworthy? Would that be you?”

“I would make my judgements. I would hardly be the only one.”

She nodded again. She seemed…satisfied, of all things.

“I don’t need a man who sits by my side and tells me with his every breath that I am always making the right choices. I need someone who isn’t afraid to tell me when I’ve gone too far, or asked for too much, or threatened too severely. I have spent long hours in wondering how I would be a different ruler. Different from my father. Different from Cersei. I won’t let power make me into a monster. I know my own heart enough to say that. But I’d like to have someone by me who can help me be sure.”

“I would help you gladly. For your sake as much as for the realm.”

That pleased her; he saw the tension leave her, and he understood. To share a burden between two people was infinitely easier than dealing with it alone. 

“When Drogo died,” she said. “I didn’t think I would ever love again. I opened my body to another, but never my heart. You surprised me.”

“I wasn’t expecting you, either, after everything I lost.”

Daenerys smiled. She looked up at him. She bit her lip.

“I’m glad we were both wrong. When I’m with you…I know exactly what kind of queen I want to be. I was always certain, in the beginning. I didn’t have the luxury of doubts. But the more I fought and the more I lost, the more I wondered what I was fighting for. You’ve reminded me. You and your family. You and your people. It’s them. It’s not the throne. It’s not the seat that Cersei Lannister holds, and it’s not the crown she wears. It’s this. You and me. It’s everyone out there, marching together toward an uncertain future for the hope of making a difference.”

“You didn’t need me to remind you,” Robb said.

“But I did,” Daenerys replied. Her smile was even brighter this time, and Robb had trouble looking away. “When you fight for so long for something…sometimes the reasons fade away. Tyrion was asking me, before you and I even met. _Why_? Why did I want the throne? Why did I want to rule? I thought I had the answers, but something in me was telling me that I was wrong. Now I understand better, and you deserve to be thanked for that.”

“I’m glad,” he said, because he didn’t know what else to say. So much of it seemed impossible. So much of _her_. The man who wished he had died with his wife and mother never could have conceived of Daenerys.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Ophelia by the Lumineers lmao


	51. Sansa X

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon and Sansa discuss marriage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whew, okay. Three's pretty good, right?? Maybe I'll get to four tonight, but don't hold your breath. It might be another bear of a chapter to edit!

_Your brother spends most of his time cloistered away in the dragon queen’s tent while I freeze in a camp with my men, surrounded by guards who pretend not to understand me and who appear to have forgotten how to smile. My brother wishes for me to share his pavilion, but he only offers so that he can be sure I don’t try to make my escape back to Kings Landing. I have told him that I have no desire to leave. He doesn’t believe me. Lady Brienne supports my sharing quarters with my men, but that’s only because she thinks it will be easier for me to escape. I hope that you, at least, can be persuaded to spare a bed, a few blankets, and perhaps a little trust for an old, miserable friend. Even if you must stick me in Winterfell’s cells._

Sansa sighed and tucked Jaime’s letter from the previous day beneath the one that had just arrived from Robb. She had assumed from the dryness of Jaime’s correspondence that the comment about Robb had been mostly in jest. Apparently not.

Robb’s letter was not nearly so colorful as Jaime’s, but that was no surprise. Robb had always hated writing. He stated the facts baldly, with none of his personality. It always made Sansa miss him _more_ whenever she received word from him. His letter this time confirmed that he and Daenerys were going to be married in the godswood at Winterfell, on the dragon queen’s request. He was as reassuring as his awkwardness with written word would allow him to be, making allusions to negotiations that had apparently gone well. Sansa found that she trusted him better than she had, and though she still would need more details when he returned, she did not feel the same panic at the thought. She had grown more certain of her place in Winterfell since he left on the back of the dragon. Part of that was Jon’s openness, part of it was Bran’s reassurance, and part of it was Arya’s continued lessons in how to use a blade. But most of it was just her, her deepening understanding of what it meant to rule and her growing confidence that she actually _could_. When Robb was married to the dragon queen, Winterfell would pass to her. She could not let them down.

_Cloistered away_ , she thought. Jaime’s words made her frown. She thought of what Jaime’s sister had said once, about women and the weapon they carried between their legs. It had never rung true for Sansa before, but she didn’t like the way those words made her feel. _Cloistered away_. Her brother had already failed their family once for love. _Love_. Perhaps it wasn’t love at all. She wanted to believe that Robb was better than that, but Robb was a man, and perhaps Cersei was right about some things.

_No_ , she thought. _Cersei’s words said more about her than they did about Robb. You have trusted him this far. Just…trust him a little further. He can want her and still make the right choices._

“What is it?” Jon asked. He was standing in the doorway, brow furrowed. He was carrying his own correspondence, though it was crumpled and wet. She had seen him earlier, playing in the snow with Ghost and Sam and little Sam. He was still flushed with laughter and exertion, and she felt oddly guilty, like her wavering mood would ruin his otherwise enjoyable morning. But he would not thank her for pushing him away. He would be especially annoyed if he realized it was because she wanted to take on the burden herself. He did enough of that, but he could not stand to have it done to him in turn.

“My letter from Robb,” she said. She held it out to him, and he came and sat across the desk from her, in the place he spent so much time of late. Ever since she had cried on him about Robb’s betrayals, he had been more open with his care for her. She liked it, even as much as it made her feel terrible to want the things she still longed for from him. She liked that he was so careful with her. She liked that he smiled more with her. They were both so busy with the running of Winterfell and with spending time separately with their other family members, and he was constantly working with the Free Folk and writing to the Wall and helping Sam with his research, or whatever it was they were doing when they had their quiet conversations. But he had time for _her_ , too, and it was finally doing away with some of the residual anxiety she’d been unable to squash from back when she was wondering what would become of her and Jon once the others were back and he no longer only had _her_ to tie him to his family.

“What does it say?” he asked her. That was something he was doing a lot of, too. Showing that he trusted her by asking for her take on things.

“Robb and Daenerys will be married in the godswood,” she said.

“Oh,” Jon answered. He was frowning at her. Trying to figure out how she felt about it without asking her.

“At least it’s a _helpful_ marriage this time,” she said.

“Right,” Jon allowed with a smile. “I know you don’t feel the same, but I like the idea.”

“Of marriage?”

“Of Robb and Daenerys Targaryen. They’re a good alliance. They’re a good _match_. They care for each other. That’s better than a good alliance.”

Sansa scoffed and pulled out a sheet of parchment to answer Robb’s letter with one of her own. She had thought to let it sit overnight so that she would be better able to marshal her feelings before responding, but Jon being near always had that effect anyway, and she would rather have it done soon. Jaime’s letters were always more difficult to answer, because she felt the pressure to be sympathetic as well as witty, now that they had grown more friendly, but she had a better idea now of how to talk to Robb.

“There’s nothing better than a good alliance,” she said, distracted. Jon laughed, then. Quiet.

“I never thought I’d hear you say that,” he said in answer to her questioning look.

“Well, it’s true.” She shrugged and shuffled through her letters one more time to remind herself what she should be writing to her brother. There was a very short update from Brienne that said nothing about Robb, nor Daenerys, nor Jaime. It was all troop movements and time estimates. _Oh, Brienne_. “I used to think differently, but…good alliances are important. They keep us alive. They keep us protected. It’s hard to go to war against a family when your daughter’s married to their heir.”

“Aye, I suppose, but…that’s not the same as love,” Jon argued softly.

“No. Love changes. Fades. It happens all the time.”

Jon sighed.

“I wish…” he started.

“Don’t start with the guilt,” Sansa chuckled.

“ _Guilt_?”

“You were going to say that you wish I could have had better experiences in love, and maybe I’d understand better.”

“Well, is that so bad a thing to say?”

“No. It’s just pointless. Alliances are what’s important. If Daenerys was just some woman, just…”

“Like Talisa?” Jon asked, his eyebrows arched. Sansa was conscious of a vague disappointment coming from him, and she was flushed. Embarrassed by it.

“That’s not what I’m saying,” she said. “Robb loved Talisa. I would have liked to have met her. It would have been a scandal even without the war, but…with the war, it was ruinous of him to choose love instead of what he had already promised to do.”

Jon nodded thoughtfully.

“I can agree to that,” he said.

“If she was just anyone, and he was choosing it _again_ …” Sansa shook her head. She’d already said all of this to Jon. Expressed her terror and her insecurities. She didn’t want to state them again. She didn’t think she needed to, frankly. “That it’s a good alliance takes some of the sting away from it, but that doesn’t mean I’m not wary.”

“Of course,” Jon said. He smiled at her when she looked at him to see his reaction. “I understand, Sansa.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“I suppose I’m not. But that’s just…it’s never been a concern for me, has it? I just don’t understand it the way you do. The way you _have_ to. Not like I ever would have been important enough to marry for an alliance before.”

“You are now.” 

“Well. Maybe. Still a man brought back from the dead, though. And I’ve been told I’m too serious. That can’t exactly be appealing.” He was teasing her, expecting a smile. She felt her throat clog up with all the words she refused to say.

“You never know,” she said instead. She hated that her instinct was to dart her eyes away, so she forced herself to keep them on him. “You seem set against it.”

“What, marriage?”

“For an alliance.”

“Oh. I don’t know. I suppose I would, if you needed me to.”

Surprised by that, Sansa felt her brow furrow. Of course it wasn’t what he _meant_ , but it was what she heard, in that sparkling, silver moment. Gods _. I would if you needed me to._

It would be so sweet, to be married to Jon. To be married even to someone _like_ Jon, but there was no one else like him. He was her friend, above all else, and she already loved him. What would that be like? To be married to someone she wanted to see every day, wanted to spend time with, wanted to talk to. Every night when they parted ways, she wished that they didn’t have to. If they were married…

She could tell herself all she wanted that she wasn’t that same stupid little girl that she used to be, but then she went and did things like this. _Thought_ things like this.

“I meant for you,” she said quickly. “For yourself. Would you ever choose it? It’s not about what I might need.”

Jon frowned at her. Had she spoken too quickly? Was it too obvious that she had been struck by something?

“If you’re saying if I’d rather choose an alliance or love, then it’s love, I suppose. But I understand what you’re saying.”

“You’re blushing,” she noticed suddenly. She couldn’t help but smile. “You’re still a romantic, aren’t you?”

He grumbled. He blushed deeper. He glared at her. She couldn’t help but laugh at him. _Sweet_ , she thought, unbidden. _He’s sweet._ It’s _sweet._

“You make that sound so ridiculous,” he said.

“It should be. You were murdered. You saw the worst of people.”

“Aye, but I didn’t _only_ see the worst,” he argued. He was so _earnest_ like this. It should have made her annoyed, or angry. She should have hated him for trying to convince her that there was no reason to close off her heart, because he just didn’t _understand_. She felt softer, instead. “It’s not _all_ hopeless. There’s got to be something we’re…you know. Fighting for. Otherwise it just doesn’t mean anything.” She was still smiling at him, and he sighed. Put-upon, rolling his eyes. “What about you, then?” he asked. “You’re so sure. Are you saying you wouldn’t?”

“Marry for love?” she asked. He nodded. He looked sad. Tense and confused and _sad_ , most of all. He thought she deserved someone good. He thought she deserved to feel loved. If only he knew she was thinking about kissing _him_ beneath the heart tree. Snowflakes falling around them. She didn’t know if she would even be able to get married in a godswood again, after the last time, but she _would_ , if he required it. He would protect her from her demons, wouldn’t he? Or he’d do his best to try, anyway. Perhaps that would be enough. “I don’t think that’s possible,” she said diplomatically. In her mind, he was smiling at her. His eyes were crinkling at the corners. He was reaching up his burned hand to brush the snow from her red hair.

“If it was possible,” he prodded.

“If it was possible, of course I would,” she replied. She was rolling and unrolling Jaime Lannister’s scroll in her hands. Some people had love right in front of them and were too stupid to see it. Some people loved the wrong people and suffered for it.

“And why are you so sure it isn’t?” Jon asked. His voice was always soft when he spoke to her, but it seemed especially soft, then. It made a lump form in Sansa’s throat. In her mind, he was holding her hand as they walked back into the hall together. The northerners cheered. Even Robb and Arya were happy. Bran was himself again. A foolish little girl’s dreams. Nothing more.

“I realized a long time ago that no one would ever marry me for love,” she answered. She had meant to sound steady and amused. Instead, she thought she sounded shaken. Perhaps it was still buried inside her, the wish that love would come to her. She’d thought that it had been bled out of her. Even if it caused her pain, she was glad to find that it wasn’t. She was glad that her last husband hadn’t taken _that_ from her, too.

“Why not?” Jon asked. He sounded affronted.

“Because I’m the sister of a king. And before that, I was the daughter of a great lord. The _first_ daughter. I’ve always been an alliance to be made. What I _want_ , who I _love_ , it doesn’t matter.”

“You aren’t just an alliance,” Jon insisted. He was looking at her…no. She was just seeing the things she _wanted_ to see, just like she did when she was a child. She was supposed to know better now. Just because she was broken and wrong, it didn’t mean Jon was the same. He was a good person. He was a good _cousin_. A good brother, too. He wanted her to feel better, and he was saying those words and speaking so earnestly because he was _trying_.

The truth was that Sansa wasn’t sure she was built for love anymore. She had been once. She had loved with her whole heart, then. Joffrey had been unworthy of it, true, but it wasn’t even always _about_ Joffrey. Not nearly so much as it was about _love_. When she was a girl, the love parts were always her favorite parts of stories. She craved the ones about knights and their heroism, but only if there was some swooning lady who watched over him and gave him her favor. To love someone fully, wholly, like Queen Naerys had loved her Dragonknight. Sansa wanted to be just like a maid in a song. Joffrey, she had been sure, would love her, and she would love him in return. That was what happened in the stories, and what was life if not a beautiful tale? She had been raised to be good, and proper, and everyone told her that she was beautiful. Of course the prince would fall in love with her! They would be married and have babies, and she would be a good and fair queen.

All of that had been dashed out of her. Not slowly, but with a sudden force. Wrested from her. Maybe it started before Joffrey cut off her father’s head, but she had continued to fool herself until that happened. _He didn’t mean it,_ she thought, every time she saw some cruelty in him. _He’s under a lot of pressure. He has a lot of responsibility. That’s all it is._

Of course it wasn’t. She was just too stupid to see it until her eyes had been forced open. And then they _stayed_ open. Not just for Joffrey, but for everyone. How was she supposed to believe in love after that? How was she supposed to risk it?

That was why it was so easy to find herself dreaming of marrying Jon. Loving him properly, like all those songs and stories she no longer believed in. Jon never expected anything from her. He never tricked her or betrayed her. He loved her as a brother, and she was safe to love him in a way that she knew was shameful, because he would never guess, and he would never love her back in the way she craved. It was fake. It wasn’t real, and that was safer.

But he was looking at her, still.

“That’s not all you are,” he continued. She couldn’t look away from his eyes. They were so large and so concerned and so _kind_. She hated and craved it at once. He didn’t make it _easy_ to stop loving him in a way that was improper. He was just always _there_ , being handsome and true and wonderful. She often wished she had been kinder to him when they were children. He no longer seemed so surprised by her kindnesses, but she knew her old self lingered sometimes when she grew short or snappish with him. And maybe, if they had been closer when they were young, it wouldn’t have been so easy to start thinking of him as _cousin_ and not _brother_. “You’re so much more than that,” he continued. She could hardly even remember what she’d said to prompt that. She hesitated, her mouth halfway to open. There was something in his expression that…

He stood, suddenly. He nearly knocked the letter out of her hands. She hadn’t realized he had leaned so close, over the desk, the better to peer at her gently.

“Jon, I,” she said. Had he seen something? Did he know?

“I should go,” he said simply. He gave her another short look, but he would not meet her eyes, and he left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Rescue My Heart by Liz Longley


	52. Brienne VII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime goes to Brienne's tent as the weather grows colder

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised a bedsharing chapter a million years ago, and I am finally here to deliver on this promise. i'm having a busy work day so far, so this might be the only chapter that goes up, but it's a doozy for my jb crowd so maybe that's good enough!

“Brienne,” the voice called. A whisper that echoed through the trees. She strained toward it. She was running through the snow. It was deep around her calves, and then her thighs. She couldn’t move quickly enough. Lady Sansa had been just ahead of her. Brienne was sure of it, though she could not remember when, or why. Robb had been with her. Holding her in his arms. They had been surrounded by tall, white, dead things. The snow was obscuring them now. She couldn’t find them. She couldn’t move fast enough to catch them. She could only hear the wind. Could only see grey sentinel trees, watching her. Whispering.

_They need you._

_They need you, and you’re too slow. You’re not enough._

_You’ll never be enough._

“Brienne.” 

The voice again, and Brienne was being pulled away. The trees faded, but the eyes that hid between them remained. Ice blue and cold. They could see her. She jolted further, pulled by the voice and by her own fear. She swirled into darkness, and then she rolled onto her back and opened her eyes. Firelight from a cookfire outside danced on the roof of the tent, casting red shadows that banished the memory of black and blue.

She was safe. She was in her tent. She was buried beneath her blankets and furs, though her breath fogged the air above her when she sighed. Podrick snored beside her, a comforting presence at her back, and two of the Dragon Queen’s men breathed quietly beyond him. She’d had her own tent at the beginning of the march. Her own cot, too, and blankets. As they marched further north, she had shared her tent with women. Dothraki women had no issues bedding down among Dothraki men, among their family units, but there were other women who marched with the army and who wanted spaces of their own. Camp followers and nurses, some, but mostly they had been women from across the sea, the women who followed Daenerys, who were unused to cold weather. They had flocked to Brienne, to her protection and to the warmth she offered with her tent and her company. Brienne had enjoyed that immensely. She had been wary of women when she was young, because her father’s paramours and her own wretched septa had been so terrible to her. But she found a peace in being among kind women who cared for her. The camp followers appreciated her because she made no demands of them and because she thanked them kindly for every courtesy. They called her gallant and knightly and all sorts of wonderful things.

Jaime and Tyrion and even Robb had laughed themselves hoarse when she’d failed to understand that several of her tentmates were _trying_ to get her to make demands of them, but once she finally did understand, the women had taken her gentle rejections kindly enough. Much kinder than any man would have, Brienne was sure. Now that they were gone, she missed them terribly.

Most of them had remained at Riverrun, with Olenna Tyrell and the wounded from Highgarden. Edmure Tully and the Blackfish had welcomed them warmly and had given them all places in the household, along with beds and blankets and food and clothing that was more suited to the weather than what little they had brought for themselves. The armies had spent a few days recovering there. Even Jaime, who had fretted, arguing he should stay in the encampment rather than face the family he had stood against, was given a place of respect in the castle. That was owed to his forethought in sending a host of Lannister men ahead to help take it back, and perhaps because Daenerys had had word spread that he was a particular ally, and should be treated well. Both Tully men avoided him, but that was probably for the best. Jaime was defensive at the best of times, and he would not like to be glared at by Edmure or chastised by Brynden. Any conversation between them would surely end in a diplomatic incident.

Perhaps it was foolish and short-sighted of her, but Brienne had several times become defensive on his behalf. The Blackfish was a good, honorable man, and she valued his friendship, but he learned early in their stay that Brienne could have a sharp tongue when it came to Jaime Lannister. She was only glad that he had kept his thoughts on that to himself, and that word had not spread to Jaime himself.

When they left Riverrun, Brynden and his army joined the march north with a good amount of the remaining Tully forces, and they had all been outfitted with new or repaired tents, blankets and furs, and as many cloaks as Edmure could spare. But it was getting colder every day as they got closer to Winterfell, and the Unsullied and the Dothraki and most of the dragon queen’s people were suffering from it. Brienne had been more than happy to give up her pavilion to a company of Dothraki, and happy to share a much smaller field tent with Podrick and two of Grey Worm’s lieutenants. She had sparred with them before, and she trusted them. And she had never minded sleeping on the ground, anyway. She found that it made the men respect her more, for her to be so visibly among them.

“Brienne?”

It was real, the voice. It wasn’t from her dream at all. She sat up fully, and the skin on her arms went pimpled from the cold. It had gotten even colder since they had bedded down. It was _freezing._ Seven hells, what was he doing out there?

She crawled to the entrance and pushed open the flap to the tent. It was a simple field tent, smaller than the one she was used to. Its small size better kept the heat from the four bodies within. Still, it was frigid outside the blankets, and the air that gusted in from outside when she pulled aside the flap was even colder. If the temperatures continued to drop too much, they might lose some people from it.

Jaime was crouched outside her tent in a Tully-blue cloak with white fur around the collar. Tyrion must have gotten it for him somewhere, because the fur was rare enough, and of fine quality. He looked distractingly good in it. Brienne could understand why he would not want to draw attention to himself by wearing it while they rode.

Sansa’s letters indicated that they would be able to provide more furs and warmer clothing for the armies when they arrived, but after years of warfare, there was a scarcity of goods everywhere they turned. The food from the Reach had been a boon, but it wouldn’t last forever. The Greyjoy ships provided fish and salted meat and fat for tallow, but furs remained elusive, and Jaime’s continued place of respect required a more humble façade. That was something Jaime understood, even if Tyrion kept trying to gild his brother in their house colors.

_Blue,_ Brienne noticed idly, _is not one of his house’s colors_ , and she had to banish the foolish thought of how well he looked in a color that was one of hers.

Jaime’s boots were new, too, and Brienne was glad. She had noticed that his old pair was wearing down. They had taken to resting the horses and walking for long stretches, though she worried about how it sapped his energy. He hated for her to mention it, so she rarely did, but she worried regardless. 

Jaime still had not abandoned them. His chance for that had long passed. She still could not believe his words to her, or the way he looked at her, or the way everyone _said_ he looked at her, but she could believe now that he would travel with them to Winterfell. He _was_ a man of honor. It warmed her heart somewhere that had grown cold after Highgarden. Jaime was a man of honor, and he was going to do the honorable thing; Cersei would not help them fight against the dead, but Jaime would. It was to be the greatest battle the world had seen in centuries. Of _course_ he would fight.

When she opened her tent, he smiled at her, and her stomach swooped the way it always did when she saw the flash of his teeth. She never seemed to get used to his handsomeness. She had grown accustomed to Lady Sansa’s beauty, and the fine features of King Robb and Jon Snow. But Jaime…somehow, his looks always took her by surprise. He looked especially good like this: comfortable and soft, swathed in warmth, though he shivered. There was new snow outside, and it was falling heavily, into his hair and beard. He had filled out on the road, after those hollow weeks of recovering from the wound she had given him. They had sparred often to keep his strength, and she had noticed on occasion with approval that it had done him some good. He looked more like she remembered him from the last time she saw him at Riverrun. He had looked well, then. He looked well _now_.

“What are you doing out there?” she hissed at him.

“Tyrion’s tent is too big. It’s freezing in there. I tried to take some of his furs, but he told me off. Can I sleep in here?”

He smiled at her helplessly. Surely he had to know what effect that had on her. She was already blushing, but the heat of his look only made it worse. She could feel the red creeping up her face, banishing the cold from the winter wind.

_They already call you Kingslayer’s Whore_ , she reminded herself. And there were three other men in her tent besides. Any ideas of propriety had abandoned her somewhere after they left Riverrun. Warmth was warmth, and they took it where they could get it.

“Fine,” she said. “Come in. Hurry.”

He breathed out some thanks that were too sincere for her to listen to without reddening further, and she crawled back under the blankets. She was still wearing her clothing, but she felt oddly bare. Podrick shifted on her other side, but he blessedly did not wake, just murmuring something insensible before settling back down. He slept like the dead, especially as it got colder and he buried himself deeper in their blankets.

Jaime had brought some of his own blankets with him, bundled beneath his cloak. It was easy to imagine that he had planned on showing them if she had seemed likely to send him away. That struck something in her. Some tenderness for him that surprised her with its force. _He thought you would turn him away._

_He still hasn’t left. He doesn’t seem likely to. What would be the point of leaving_ now? _You can trust this, can’t you? Even if you can’t trust the rest._

The rest. Jaime’s quiet, drugged confession. His later refusal to take the words back. His later quiet insistence that they had been true.

Brienne was not a stranger to the mockery of men. In Renly’s camp, there had even been a bet to see who could win her over, take her maidenhead. They had been too kind, too flattering, too obvious, and yet she had not noticed for so long. When Jaime smiled too kindly and told her that he loved her, of course she assumed…

But men did not enact those cruelties for no reason. Not in her experience. They enacted those cruelties for other men. To make them laugh or to feel more powerful. The only man in camp Jaime spoke to regularly was Tyrion. He slept apart from his men now that most of them had integrated with the other armies. The Lannister men still looked to him for guidance, but he was stern and officious with them. There were no ribald jokes or bets or cruelties. And it was Jaime, besides. That would not be honorable, and she _did_ believe him to be honorable.

No, it was not cruelty that she feared from Jaime. It was inconstancy. He loved Cersei. He had _always_ loved Cersei. Perhaps it was easy to fool himself into thinking he didn’t love her anymore. Perhaps he didn’t _want_ to love her anymore. It would be convenient to love Brienne instead. It would be more like the honorable man that Jaime craved to be. Perhaps he even _did_ love her, in a way, but he could not love her more than he loved Cersei. It wasn’t possible. If Brienne gave in now, if she told him that she felt the same…he would hurt her, in the end. She was sure of it. He would go back to Cersei, because Cersei was his other half, and Brienne was not, no matter how badly she wished she was.

Jaime shed his cloak, and he fumbled in the darkness. She was only briefly alarmed when he slipped beneath the blankets beside her, close enough that she could smell the woodsmoke that clung to his hair and beard. What had she expected? That he would sleep on the other side with the Unsullied? Of course he would choose to bed down beside her. And it was not so new, anyway. They had done it often enough on the road from Harrenhal.

She set to spreading out his pile of blankets over them, to give herself something to do. She slipped one over Podrick, which Jaime didn’t complain about, to her surprise. She could feel the cold coming off him, chilled air filling the space between them. Her fingers twitched, wanting to touch him. Warm him up. She didn’t move. _He’s going to move closer._ She knew it before he did it.

_He found an excuse to come here._ She knew that, too.

She considered facing away from him and closing her eyes. Going back to sleep. Jaime was shifting under the blankets beside her. She hesitated. She turned towards him instead, her head resting on her pack. He was very close. He turned on his side to face her, too, and he smiled. There was so little light in the tent. Just what shone through the canvas from the fires outside. Her every instinct was to back away, but she didn’t.

“You’re freezing,” she whispered, and he smiled more brightly and shifted closer. _This is too dangerous_. She knew that, too. To be this close to him. To sleep like this, with him beside her. If he touched her…

“I told you. Tyrion’s easier to keep warm with a few blankets. I’m a bit bigger. And you’re the biggest person in this camp, so I thought if _anyone_ would know how to keep warm...”

She couldn’t help but smile at that. She ducked her head to hide it.

“I’m not,” she pointed out. “There are plenty of Dothraki here that are bigger than me.”

“You’re not,” Jaime agreed. His voice was more serious than it had been. She met his eyes and saw that he was smiling softly at her. “So what does that tell you?”

“That you’re a liar who wanted in my bed,” she managed to say, which made him laugh quietly at her.

He was so difficult to disbelieve sometimes. If she were another woman, perhaps she would believe him. Perhaps she would fall for his kind smiles the same way she had fallen for Renly’s. Renly had done a young girl a kindness that cost him nothing, and it earned him a devoted follower for the rest of his life. Jaime had treated her as an equal, and he had given her a priceless sword and a true quest, and she had not grown up so much since Renly that she was immune to that. But she knew better, because she knew Jaime better than she had ever known Renly. She knew what he wanted, and she knew what he would choose, and she _knew_ that it wasn’t her. Not Brienne. She wasn’t made to be loved. She was made to love fruitlessly and from afar.

She loved Jaime from up close, too. She had worried about that, once. Worried that it would be easier to love him from far away, because it would be easy to forget the things about him that infuriated her when they were apart. But weeks in his company had not done away with her love, even as he had annoyed her and tortured her and tricked himself into believing himself in love with her. She loved him still. She loved him when he was desperate for her sword on the battlefield, and she loved him now that she saw that misery and tension and darkness falling away from him the further they got from Kings Landing. He had been reborn a different man after the battle, and every day he was more whole than he had been the day before, and she loved him for it.

Even as she rejected his words as an impossible dream. Even when she was avoiding him, and furious with him, she was still so happy he was alive, and she still loved him. She didn’t know what to do with that love, but it was there within her. She no longer remembered what it was to live without it.

“Why did you say…” she started. She stopped herself before she could continue, but he understood.

“Because it’s true,” he replied. Their voices were low, whispered, but his words seemed louder somehow. _It can’t be true_ , she thought. 

“But,” she said. There were so many things. _Look at me. What about your sister? You aren’t thinking straight. You’re just convinced it’s what you_ should _feel. It isn’t real. It isn’t true._ “You know I don’t need. I still. It isn’t.” She sighed, and he laughed at her. Quiet exhales that he hid beneath his blanket.

“If you say a full sentence, I’ll respond to it,” he said.

“I don’t need you to…to love me,” she managed. “If that’s what it’s about.”

“It isn’t,” he said simply. His brow was furrowed. He was looking at her, and so she took the opportunity to look back at him. She had hardly been granted the opportunity lately, without having to worry that he would catch her. She remembered watching him when he was at his sickest, when the Mummers had them. He had been dirty and ragged, then. Still beautiful, but in a way that didn’t touch her. She had feared for him. She had feared that he would stop breathing in the night, and so she had watched him as he slept beside her. His labored breathing had kept her awake.

His breathing wasn’t labored now. It was steady, sure. _He_ was steady and sure, and she was the one unbalanced. She reached for him in the dark. She hardly understood what she was doing. It felt like they were apart from reality. Perhaps it was only the lingering loneliness of her dream that made her do it. Forget the rules for long enough. She pressed her fingertips against his jaw. His beard was rough against them, and she could hear the scratch of it louder than she would have expected in the otherwise quiet tent. One of the Unsullied rolled over in his sleep. Podrick made some murmuring sound. Men were laughing and talking at a campfire some distance away. There was wind, too. Yet Jaime’s eyes didn’t leave hers, and no other sound mattered. Someone could sound an alarm outside and it would have taken her some time to respond.

When she fought Jaime on the battlefield, smoke stinging her eyes and tears of panic flooding them, he said a thousand words with a single expression, and she understood every one of them. _He wants to die. He wants me to kill him._ At the time, she thought…she wasn’t sure. Perhaps she hadn’t been thinking anything at all. But later, afterward, she thought it was because of Cersei. He had been afraid to fail his sister. His queen. Afraid to disappoint her. He had known he could not win, and so of course he did not want to return to her alive, broken and humiliated and a failure. Of course he wanted to die _trying_ for her, because from what Brienne knew of Cersei, that would have likely pleased the queen.

He had been torn, though. She knew that now as she hadn’t then. He had been torn in two: the man who loved his sister and the man who wanted to do _good._ He didn’t seem torn now. Her palm touched his jaw, her hand pressing against the length of it, her thumb brushing over his skin, and Jaime closed his eyes. He wasn’t smiling anymore. He didn’t move away; he didn’t move towards her, either. He breathed out. Slow and slightly shaky. His chin dipped closer to his chest, and his next breath was almost shuddering. He _did_ move closer, then, and he turned his head slightly, far enough that he could kiss her palm. It tingled where his lips had pressed, and she stared at him in astonishment.

“Jaime,” she whispered.

“Brienne,” he replied. He reached up and held her hand in place against his jaw, so that she would not snatch it away. He took it, and he brought her hand and his down between them, so that their two hands together were pressed against both of their chests. He was too close. She didn’t know how to be this close to him anymore. Not without the excuse of his illness or the way the Mummers had tied them together on that horse.

“I can’t…” she said, and he nodded.

“I know,” he said. His eyes were still on her.

_I know you don’t trust me_ , they told her. They were nearly wretched. Nearly miserable in a way they shouldn’t have been, because she _did_ trust him. It wasn’t fair for him to look at her like that. It wasn’t fair for him to think…

_I know you don’t trust me,_ his eyes said. _But please don’t send me away._ She squeezed his fingers. One of the men on guard outside laughed loudly. A gust of wind shook the flap of the tent. The space between she and Jaime was smaller and warmer than it had been. Her eyes were more adjusted to the dark, and she could see his face better. How hopeful and at once hopeless he looked.

She wanted to ask him why. She wanted to ask him _when_. She wanted to know every single detail about what he was claiming to feel for her, as if it would prove something to her. As if enough words would make her understand, or perhaps allow her to see that she _was_ right, after all, and that his love was as impossible as she was sure it was.

And yet the thought of having the words spoken aloud was almost excruciating. How was she supposed to listen to it? She couldn’t. It would be too much. Even if he didn’t sound like he was lying. Even if she believed him. It would be…

“Cersei,” she started instead. She swallowed. “She said. She told me that I was in love with you.”

She couldn’t help but to mention his sister, it seemed. She could not banish the queen’s perfect golden hair or her perfect golden face. To forget Cersei was to forget the true danger: Jaime might have some fondness for Brienne, and he was choosing to follow her now. But his heart would always be Cersei’s.

“When?” he asked. He propped himself up on his elbow, his maimed arm stretching towards her, and she allowed her hand to reach out and touch it, fingertips sliding over the scarred skin. She had wanted to, every time she saw it on the road. To remind him, maybe, of how easy things had been between them when they were fighting for their lives and his wound was slowly killing him. Or to reassure him, maybe. She hardly knew. She just wanted to, and so with a newfound boldness in this liminal moment, she did. He watched her hand, and she thought he might pull his stump away, hide it again beneath the furs, but he didn’t. He breathed in another shuddering breath.

“The wedding,” she said. She worried that he might go blank at the mention of his son’s death, but Jaime only laughed. She shushed him, but only one of the Unsullied fighters stirred, and then settled again. Jaime ducked his head, still laughing, though quieter now. He leaned in. His forehead pressed against her shoulder, and she felt the shock of it as if he had burned her. He was so casual, so unthinking with his touches. And they meant everything. How could he not…

“So long,” he said. She was blushing. She wanted to get up and leave him there. Panic was filling her. Mocking. He was _mocking_ her. He… “Of course she guessed it in _you_ but not in me. She never understood me at all, did she? She never would have thought…” He laughed again. This time, it was bitter. Quieter, too, so she didn’t shush him. He raised his head to look at her. He brushed her hair away from her face, and her skin felt charged along the path his fingers took. “I can’t believe she saw it before I did.”

He wasn’t mocking her at all. He was mocking himself. He was mocking Cersei. She breathed more easily again. She tried to smile. It felt crooked and wrong on her face. Jaime bit his bottom lip, and Brienne wondered.

What would he do if she kissed him?

Her hand still played over his scars on his wrist, but she didn’t look away from his eyes.

“You still don’t believe me,” he said. And that was true, too.

“I believe…something,” she managed. “I believe you _think_ you…care for me.”

Jaime huffed out a defeated sound, and she thought that he would pull his hand away, roll away from her, but he didn’t. He rested his head at last on the pack. His maimed arm stayed between them, and she did not take her hand from it. His smile was less bitter than she expected it to be, but it was still in some ways pained, and still in some ways painful to look at.

“You’ll see,” he said. “I’ll prove it to you. Gods willing, before I die in this war. If not, perhaps it will be easier to trust a corpse.”

“Jaime,” she admonished, and he leaned in. She thought he would kiss her. She nearly held her breath. The shadow of his face blocked out the light from the fires beyond the tent. She saw only impressions of him. A glint of his eyes. Strands of his hair as it fell over his forehead. His breath was on her cheek, and his lips followed it, pressed to her cheekbone. She breathed in sharply. She clutched his arm tighter. Her entire body warmed at the contact.

Jaime dropped his head back down on his pack.

“Sleep, Brienne,” he said. She nodded. She tried to get comfortable. Jaime’s eyes closed slowly. He was still smiling. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is If I Say by Mumford and Sons


	53. Arya V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya observes as the army arrives at Winterfell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm terrible with time management so this might end up being the only chapter today as well, though there's a chance for more later, idk! 
> 
> Anyway, I hope people are enjoying!

When the army, with Robb and Daenerys at its head, arrived at last in Winterfell, Arya was standing behind Bran’s chair. She found that she took up less space that way. Peoples’ eyes darted right past her, like she was the sweet, helpful sister pushing around her brother. Even people who knew her better made the same mistakes when she tried hard enough to look invisible. And when they weren’t watching, she was able to watch _them._

Sansa stood rigid and ready to receive their guests. Her small smile was fixed on her face, but Arya knew it for what it was. She knew Sansa was worried. She would have known it even if Sansa hadn’t voiced it, but Sansa _had_. She had been slow to allow any of the burden to fall on any of her siblings. She preferred to handle every worry on her own. But Arya had persisted in asking, and once Sansa started speaking—at first just to shut Arya up—she seemed unable to stop.

Sansa worried about the lack of food. She worried about the lack of beds. The lack of horses. The lack of furs and firewood. She worried about how far the hunters were having to range out for meat. She worried that the approaching armies would eat through the stores that were supposed to last the north for the entire winter.

She worried about Robb. She worried that this proposed marriage alliance would lead to their ruin. She worried that her hesitation would lead her to be cold. She worried about what impression she would be giving to her people, and she worried about what her people might _want_ to see from her. Whether they would want her to support this alliance or stand against it. She worried about Jon, but that was nothing new. She worried about the Night King, too, though not in the same way that Arya and Jon did. Actually, he was a bit hilariously low on the list of things she was concerned with.

“I can’t do anything about that,” she had said when Arya teased her for it. “Whatever happens with _him_ will happen. It won’t be up to me. But I’m responsible for everything else around here.”

She’d said it in such a put-upon tone that Arya had to laugh. It had been the first time that Sansa had smiled in _days_.

Her smile now was much faker than that one had been. She was watching the dragons spin around in the air before settling down in the snowy plain where they had spent most of their time the first time they were here.

“What do they even eat?” she had asked Arya one night, in a panicked whisper. “We barely have enough meat to feed our people!”

Arya could see those thoughts clouding Sansa’s mind as the gates opened. Robb and Daenerys looked quite majestic at the head of the representatives of the army that had been chosen to enter Winterfell’s halls. They were both smiling, formal. _Awkward_. It was so strange to see Robb like that. Robb was meant for laughing and jesting with his siblings, not kingliness. He looked like a fool for trying. Arya made a face at him, which of course he saw. He ducked his face into his furs to hide his grin, but he couldn’t hide the small shake of his head or the way his eyes crinkled.

Jon stood on Sansa’s other side, and Arya supposed that all together they probably made a pretty picture. The Starks all united, waiting to greet this new ruler. This queen they were all supposed to support. This queen who wanted to take their brother away and make him her king or her consort or however all this stuff worked. Arya didn’t know. She just knew that Robb wouldn’t be living at Winterfell anymore. Arya had liked Daenerys fine, with her dragons and her smiles and her pretty face. But that didn’t mean she wanted Daenerys to have _Robb_. Arya wasn’t a child like she had been, but there was an impulse to keep her brothers close that reminded her of when she _was_.

“It was stupid,” Sansa had said wistfully one night. “To think that we would all stay together for very long.” But Arya didn’t think it was stupid at all. She thought it was nice. She’d waited for so long to get home. To be together. Her mother and father and Rickon were all dead, and most of the people who’d helped raised her were gone. Old Nan and Jory and Rodrick. They were gone and dead, and home would never be really the same without them. But it was still home, and she didn’t want Robb to leave it too, no matter _how_ much he liked his dragon queen.

And he seemed to like her quite a bit. He helped her down from her horse with a smile. There was another man with her, this tall, unsmiling man with a craggy northern face who tried to help her down, too. Reached his hand out and then snatched it away when he realized that Robb had gotten there first. He didn’t glare or act offended or anything, but Arya could see it, and she knew. She barely had to look at them to see that he was obviously in love with the dragon queen. Old and craggy as he was, he wore his longing plain. He’d have to be mad to move against Robb, but it was still good to notice these things, just in case. Some people _were_ mad.

Robb tucked the dragon queen’s arm through his. They walked up to Sansa for introductions as if they hadn’t been here just a few weeks ago. Arya ignored the greetings and the formal shite she hated. She saw Brienne riding in next, with that boy squire just behind her. She was already watching Sansa and Robb and Daenerys with obvious concern. Good. Arya was glad she was back. She and Jon already worried over Sansa enough, but it was good to have someone else who would be almost always by her side. 

Brienne met her eyes, then, and smiled just slightly. Arya tipped her head in acknowledgement in return.

Just behind Brienne was Jaime Lannister. He looked much older than he had the last time Arya saw him. Much older, and much grayer, too. One handed. Not nearly as knightly. She thought he looked like a man from one of Old Nan’s stories the first time, when he rode into Winterfell and took off his helmet, shaking out his pretty blonde hair. She’d always hated all the sappy romantic bits of the stories, but she remembered thinking that he’d make a decent enough hero from one of them. Sansa would have swooned at the sight of him if he was some ancient knight sworn to protect some lady in one of those songs where everybody died and Sansa wiped her eyes prettily at how _tragic_ it was, as if that wasn’t a boring way to end a story. It was only the fact that he was the Kingslayer that kept Sansa from swooning last time, Arya was sure. Sansa only swooned over gallant men.

Well. Men she _thought_ were gallant, anyway. She’d been a bit of an idiot about Joffrey, but that was over, and Arya had done plenty of stupid stuff as a girl, too.

Lannister was all bundled up in a blue cloak, his shoulders around his ears. He was complaining to his little brother, who rode in just beside him. Tyrion was amused and shaking his head at whatever Jaime was saying. Arya wanted to scream at them both to get out of her castle, but that was the old Arya. The new Arya knew that grudges couldn’t last forever if you wanted to move forward. If they were going to have any future at all, they needed all the help they could get. The Lannisters came with quite a lot of soldiers, and they would be a good alliance. It was their sister Arya wanted. If they tried to stop her, there might be a problem, but she would play along until then.

Besides. Sansa had made her promise to be nice, and Sansa asked for so little of Arya. Just occasional niceness and a few lessons on how to use a knife to defend herself, and all things considered, those were easy enough. Playing nice with Lannisters made her feel a bit like a traitor, but Sansa had enough to worry about without Arya getting into a fight straightaway.

Suddenly, it was her turn to greet Robb, who ruffled her hair like he used to when she was a girl, even though Arya glared at him for it. Daenerys smiled at her, and Arya said something that she thought was suitably friendly without sounding too stuck-up. Daenerys smiled wider, so it must have been fine. Her tall man shadow lurked nearby. Arya eyed him pointedly, and Robb shook his head.

Fine. If Robb thought he was okay, Arya would be a bit more subtle about watching him.

Sansa was pulling Brienne into a hug that clearly startled the other woman, and Jon was laughing at both of them. Jaime and Tyrion Lannister were smiling as well, waiting for their turn to approach Sansa. Sansa had been worried about this, about seeing her first husband again, but now she seemed calmer, and Arya knew she’d be all right.

She started to slink away to find a better vantage point where she could watch everyone at once. Bran cast her a slightly amused look as she went.

Once she was up on the walk above, she watched Robb and Daenerys speaking quietly on their own by the entrance to the Great Hall. Brienne was lingering, torn between joining them as she ought and waiting for Sansa. Tyrion greeted Sansa warmly, and though Arya couldn’t hear Sansa’s response, she could picture it easily enough. Something suitably polite but cold enough that Tyrion would not feel like he could say anything he wanted. Jon lurked over her shoulder. Tyrion made his excuses quickly.

Then it was Jaime Lannister who stood before Sansa, and Arya couldn’t help but smile as she watched them. Jaime Lannister’s oldness and grayness fell away a bit as he smirked and bent to kiss Sansa’s hand. He said something to her that made her press her lips together and turn her head away. Angry, Arya thought, but she only thought so for a moment. _She’s laughing. Or trying not to._ Her shoulders shook briefly with it, before she looked back at him. One corner of her mouth twitched upward. Jon had his hand on her arm, but it fell away when he realized that she was all right. Jaime Lannister was talking, and Sansa responding. Sansa spoke to him much more easily than Arya had expected, though she knew that Sansa and Jaime Lannister had been writing each other for months. Sansa’s eyes sparkled, and Arya paced closer along the walk so she could better hear.

“I hope you’re less inclined to dramatics in person,” Sansa was saying. “Because it’s much easier to respond to those in letter form.”

“No, ask my brother. I’m quite dramatic aloud. _More_ so, actually. It’s easier to speak my thoughts than struggle to write them.”

“Well, you’ll have to forgive all the laughter, then,” Sansa said, and Jaime threw back his head and laughed at that, as if she had said something more than just merely amusing. Arya rolled her eyes. She should have known those two would get on. Suddenly Lannister took a step back, and he drew his sword. Arya’s throat went dry, and she felt a glimmer of instinctive fear, but she didn’t move. She knew what he was doing. Jon stepped up. Brienne stared. Jaime looked at both of them like they were idiots. Tyrion sighed. Jaime knelt, then, sweeping his blue cloak back over one shoulder, and Arya rolled her eyes, and she saw Sansa doing the same, though she also saw the way Sansa’s cheeks were going pink. Oh _gods_ , it _was_ just like in a story. Arya hated it. She didn’t feel slightly breathless at all.

Well. Sansa would be happy. Everyone was watching them. Tyrion had his face buried in one of his hands and was slowly shaking it. Robb was looking rather smug, as if he had already known—which he probably had, knowing Robb. If there was anyone who was willing to indulge Sansa in her silly little fantasies, it had always been Robb. Always playing knights and damsels, always including Sansa in the games and letting her play the princess so she didn’t have to risk getting all dirty. Daenerys was even smiling, though she looked just a bit jealous, like _she_ wouldn’t have minded if a handsome old knight got down and swore to her. Arya tried to catch the craggy one’s eye, but he didn’t notice. Maybe he was already sworn to her. His loss if he didn’t take the opportunity.

Jaime was swearing to Sansa, pledging his life to her. Saying the words and staring up into her eyes and smiling at her. Sansa was saying the words back to him. Brienne had wandered over, and she was looking at Jaime as if he had lost his wits. Tyrion was looking at the sky in mute appeal, like he was asking the gods to strike him down. Arya couldn’t blame him.

“We will protect Ned Stark’s daughters with Ned Stark’s sword,” Jaime said, and Sansa dipped her head and smiled, because it was exactly the kind of thing that would get her going. Arya was only a little bit annoyed after that. Maybe it was just a move to make sure he didn’t get killed by the dragon queen or any of the northmen, but it was a good one, and now Sansa was twice as safe as before.

She headed up to the walls, after that. The plains beyond Winterfell had been bare and snow-covered this morning, but now they were dotted with tents, and the snow had been muddied by all the boots and the horses. There were men digging trenches. Men setting up more tents. Cookfires. Men driving wagons towards Winterfell’s walls. Arya had seen large groups of men before, but nothing like this. This was an _army._ It felt like the biggest army the world had ever seen, though she doubted that was true. She saw sigils from Dorne and the Highgarden rose. She saw Lannister banners. She saw men from The Vale. There were other symbols she had never even _seen_ before, and she took them in hungrily. She always wanted to learn _more._

The dragons had their own spots away from the men, but they seemed so close, what with being so large. She wouldn’t have liked to be camped in the same field as one, she didn’t think. What if it sneezed? _Did_ dragons sneeze?

She climbed higher, up the side of the keep, the way she remembered Bran doing when he was a boy. So high up, she could see how far the army stretched. No wonder Bran used to like it up here. Arya had been frightened of the heights as a girl, though she had pretended not to be. She should tell that to Bran. He might think that was funny. It might make him remember more.

_What if she turns on us?_ Sansa had asked Bran. _We’d be defenseless._

_She won’t,_ Bran had replied, and Sansa had breathed out. Relieved.

Arya wasn’t so sure she believed him. Bran was always saying he wasn’t some kind of oracle. He said he couldn’t tell the future, and he said he couldn’t read minds, and he said he couldn’t do all _kinds_ of things that would be useful if he _could_ do them. How could he know that Daenerys would stick to her word? How could be sure that Robb was making the right choice in trusting her and that they were making the right choice in trusting Robb?

Sansa wasn’t. Arya wasn’t. Even _Jon_ wasn’t. Maybe it was just that things had been so bad for them for so long that it didn’t seem like things would _ever_ fully turn around. They had all learned to keep their guard up, and it wasn’t easy to let it down again. Things didn’t go well for the Starks. That was just how things _worked._ But they had survived this long—or, well, Arya and Sansa had survived this long—through learning not to leave anything to chance. Preparing for the worst. Even if Bran _was_ some kind of mystical wizard thingy, how could they possibly leave everything to chance on nothing more than his word?

Arya clambered up another eave, and she spotted Sandor down below on the battlements, watching the dragons with a mighty scowl. She laughed at him and pushed some snow off the roof that would fall and land on his head before she scampered away, making her way through one of the windows and into the library. There was no one in there, so she escaped quickly through a servants’ passage she remembered from when she was young. As she remembered, it took her to the top of the great hall, near the ceiling. A little door that allowed someone to crawl out onto the planks and clean off the chandeliers. She stayed in her little doorway; she wasn’t frightened of heights any longer, but it just made _sense_ to stay hidden.

Robb and Daenerys were entering the hall, and she watched from above as they did. Daenerys looked cold and beautiful when she faced everyone, but Arya had seen the way she smiled for Robb and the rest of the family when she was up close. It was a queen’s face that she was wearing now, for all the northern lords who had gathered to greet her. It wasn’t her own.

Sansa entered next on Jaime Lannister’s arm. They were still talking. They would get annoying quickly, Arya was sure.

She should have probably been down there to walk in with Tyrion Lannister, if she was remembering right, but those were their parents’ stuffy rules, and she didn’t care. He could walk _himself_ in. She ducked back outside through another open window, and she peered down off the walls to the other side. There were men directing each other as they set up camps there, too. These were Unsullied. She recognized their pointy hats, and they were all so stiff and formal. She’d been training with the Wildlings for so long, now. She wondered how she’d fare against one of _them_. In her experience, stiff and formal didn’t make for very good fighting, but she knew that they had a reputation, and she knew it was probably deserved. Just because she didn’t understand it, it didn’t mean it wasn’t true. She watched some of them training for a bit, putting off the inevitable moment when she’d have to go in to the feast. They’d be good, at least, against the dead. She wasn’t sure they’d make it very long in those vests, though. Sansa would have a fit and start making a million sleeves of fur to stick on their arms if she saw. The thought made Arya smile.

* * *

By the time she made it into the Great Hall, the feast was well underway. Robb and Daenerys were in the spots of honor at the high table, where Arya’s parents used to sit. Sansa sat on Robb’s other side, and a pretty woman with curly dark hair sat beside Daenerys. Arya was pleased to note that the craggy jealous man was down at the other end.

Robb seemed nervous, and he kept sending Sansa searching glances. He seemed a bit pale, too. Good. At least he understood that this was a big deal. Arya’d been annoyed by his letter to Sansa. She’d snuck into Sansa’s solar to read it, because Sansa hadn’t wanted to show her. It was just how _blank_ his words were. So plain, telling his little sister what was going to happen. As if Sansa had no reason to be concerned! Sansa certainly wasn’t hiding her discomfort well. Jon was on her other side, and he kept talking to her quietly. Trying to catch her attention. Bran wasn’t there. Neither was Tyrion. Sansa, Arya noticed, had sat Jaime Lannister and Brienne beside each other at the table just below theirs, and Brienne was stiff and annoyed as Jaime babbled on about something.

She didn’t see any threats. She couldn’t see any problems. She didn’t want to sit at the high table, though. She stayed in her hiding place and watched them all, instead. Sometimes she liked it better when she wasn’t involved. When she could just _watch_ everyone. Sometimes, oddly, it made her feel more connected to her family. She watched Robb coax a few reluctant smiles out of Sansa. She watched Sansa speak to him with a quiet patience that meant she was trying to _explain_ her anger instead of hiding it away. She watched as wine loosened everyone up. Robb kissed Sansa on the temple, and she pushed him away with a laugh. The pretty dark-haired woman exchanged a few words with an Unsullied who stopped to deliver a report to Daenerys, and Daenerys giggled girlishly at whatever was said and hid her smile in a glass of wine. The craggy man scowled down at Lyanna Mormont when the little bear approached to chat. She was probably saying something _dreadful_. Arya wished she was close enough to hear.

Sansa suggested dancing, which everyone agreed to happily. No one agreed more enthusiastically than Jaime Lannister, which Brienne regarded with equal parts amusement and plain dread, though she helped him move their table aside to clear the floor. Robb tried to teach Daenerys some of the northern dances, though he was so awful at them that Sansa had to step in and show Daenerys herself. They spun together across the floor, and everyone was laughing and cheering. Knowing Sansa, her offer was probably at least a bit calculated, and it was a good calculation. People were watching. They breathed easier when they saw their beloved Lady Stark laughing with the dragon queen.

Jon watched from the high table, smiling wistfully down at them.

“Ask her to dance, you idiot,” Arya muttered. Jon didn’t, of course.

Jaime Lannister extended his missing hand to Brienne, but she frowned at him and shook her head. He went to the floor anyway, and soon he and Sansa were dancing together.

“Both of you,” Arya muttered, watching Brienne and Jon pine annoyingly, their eyes turned in the same direction. “Seven hells, you’re ridiculous.”

Not that _she_ would want to dance with anyone, if she was out there. She’d never learned the steps, and anyway, there wasn’t anyone she could imagine ever _wanting_ to dance with. She wasn’t like Brienne. Brienne, looking at her, it was so _obvious_. If the Kingslayer couldn’t see it, he was a bigger idiot than Brienne. Sansa’s sworn sword watched Lannister longingly, openly. She kept sipping at her wine as if she wanted to hide behind it. Her face was flushed. Arya wasn’t like that. If she wanted someone, she would simply tell them. What was so difficult about it, anyway?

The craggy man was watching Daenerys again, having escaped Lyanna Mormont’s scrutiny for a bit. Well. Maybe it was hard for _some_ people. But Brienne had no reason to pine. It was clear Daenerys didn’t look at the craggy man the same way the craggy man looked at her, but Lannister looked back at Brienne in _exactly_ the same way. Brienne _had_ to see it. She wasn’t a total fool, was she?

They all looked like fools from where Arya was hidden. It reminded her of watching the mummers’ shows. People she knew, _stories_ she knew, but presented in ways she didn’t understand. This was like that. Why were they behaving so _stupidly_?

* * *

At last, when the feast was over, she crept through the halls and into Sansa’s rooms.

“Well?” Sansa asked without turning around. Arya nearly bit her tongue in surprise.

“You’re getting better at that,” she said. She didn’t ask how Sansa had heard her enter, though she longed to. She wouldn’t let Sansa know that she’d been surprised.

“I’m getting used to it. So what did you learn?”

“Lots, though not much that you’d find very interesting. You’re still a good dancer. Though your partner wasn’t bad. Even with one hand. You probably shouldn’t have danced with him so much, though. Even _I_ know that. It probably looked like something else to a bunch of those stuffy lords.”

“I tried to get him to ask Brienne again, but he refused.”

“His ego took enough of a beating the first time, I think. The man Daenerys was with. Who was that?”

Sansa seemed confused by the quick turn of conversation, and she took a moment to figure out what Arya was saying. She frowned slightly. “Jorah Mormont. Lady Lyanna’s relative. He escaped Westeros because father would have executed him for trading in slaves. Why?”

“Nothing. Just that he’s in love with Daenerys. I don’t think it’s going to be a problem, but…you asked for anything.”

“I did,” Sansa said. “Thank you. What else?”

There wasn’t much to worry about, Arya didn’t think. But she told Sansa everything anyway. How Bran and Tyrion were off talking somewhere. How Varys snuck out after one of the Unsullied came to talk to him. How Daenerys frowned almost as much as she smiled.

_Tell her,_ she thought suddenly. _About Jon. About how he wanted to ask her to dance._

But she didn’t. She told Sansa about the way the camps outside were laid out, instead.

After, just as she was about to leave, Sansa said, “the wedding will be in a few days’ time.” She took a deep breath and continued, “and then the north won’t be its own kingdom anymore.”

“I know,” Arya said. She looked at her sister carefully. “I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does to you.”

“It did.”

“It can still matter. You can still be sad.”

“I know,” Sansa said quietly. “I just…wanted it all to mean something. Mother and father. Rickon. Taking Winterfell back. Restoring the north. I wanted it to feel like…it was for a reason.”

* * *

Arya thought of that, later. A _reason_. She’d stopped thinking of reasons a long time ago. People were people, and they did horrible and messy and sometimes wonderful things. She’d met too many good people and too many bad people to avoid knowing that. But she remembered, after Sansa’s words, a time when she thought that things _did_ have reasons. She wondered when exactly she had stopped. She thought it was probably the day her father died, though she wasn’t sure.

She found Robb in the godswood, under the heart tree. She’d known he’d be there, even though it was dark. He was with Jon. Both of them sitting silently. When she stepped into the ring of light cast by their torches, they smiled at her. Jon weary. Robb wary.

“You’re sure about this?” she asked. “About her?”

“Yes,” Robb said. There was no doubt in his tone. He didn’t look lost anymore, like he had before.

“And not just because we need her dragons?”

“Not just because we need her dragons,” Robb confirmed.

And so she knew, now. Even if they won, even if he lived, they would lose him.

She sat between them on the rock, and she looked up at the heart tree with them. She wished Sansa was with them too.

And Bran, she supposed.

Jon wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Robb ruffled her hair again. She wasn’t a little girl anymore. She didn’t _need_ them. Still, she wanted them close.

_Just let it last a little longer_ , she begged the heart tree. Looking up into its impassive face, she found it hard to imagine the stupid old tree granting any favors. Still, she asked it anyway. _Just let it last._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Living in Awe by Cloud Cult


	54. Daenerys VI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A wedding in the godswood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've got two chapters already edited and will post them both now, but I am slightly? hopeful? of a third today. We'll have to see how it goes. 
> 
> As always, yell at me at angel-deux-writes if you want to chat about this or anything else! I hope you continue to enjoy!

Her gown was white and silver, with black and red on the bodice and the train in delicate swirls. The red on the underside of the gown looked like blood dragging through the snow when she looked at it the wrong way, so she tried not to.

A second wedding. She had hoped to avoid this once, and now she was walking gladly towards it. Her head was held high. She loved the man waiting at the end of the walk. She told herself these things again and again to make it less frightening. She had no idea why she needed to. It shouldn’t have been frightening at all.

She loved the man on her arm, too. That was her only true regret. He had been so many things to her. Brother, father, husband. Ser Jorah had been all of it at once, and she knew that he loved her as she loved Robb.

As she had loved Drogo.

She didn’t love Jorah in the same way. She could not apologize for it, and she would not regret it, but she did feel _sorry_ for it, in a way. She didn’t want to make this more difficult for him. She had never loved someone who did not love her in return, but she imagined it must not be an easy thing. She had worried when he offered to walk her to the heart tree.

“Are you sure?” she had asked. He had only smiled, understanding her concern, and he had gently held her hand.

“He will be a better king than Daario would have been,” was all he said, with good humor that couldn’t entirely hide his sadness.

_And a better king than you would have been, too_ , she thought, and she felt genuine sorrow for him. He had found his way back to her, as he had promised he would. He was still her most loyal friend, even after everything. She was glad he was with her, but she knew what it had cost him. She didn’t say anything else. She merely pulled him down so that she could kiss his brow.

It felt right to be on his arm. He was dressed well, and he walked proudly. He had been worried, she knew, about seeing his living relatives, but Lyanna Mormont was a girl of twelve or so who had merely looked him up and down and declared him fit enough to stand against the dead for the honor of their house. Jorah had merely laughed. Later, he said, “she reminds me of my father”, and he had seemed lighter, since.

He was home again, in the North, among the snow. Daenerys wasn’t, but she knew that she would adjust as long as she was here. She had done nothing _but_ adjust in her life. She had found power where there was none. Comfort and strength when men wanted her weak and miserable. The north was not so bad as that, and they had a war to win.

The wood around Winterfell was lit with candles and lanterns, casting a dim and beautiful light that nearly took her breath as she walked. Everything was quiet, draped and decorated and painted in silver and red, and her breath fogged up around her face, and perhaps it could have been a terrifying place, if she didn’t feel as safe as she did. It felt like an old and powerful force was around her. Perhaps that was silly. But there was a hush over everything that made this wedding feel almost like a dream. Quiet and melancholy, except for the emotion that swelled in her heart. There could not be anything less like her first wedding in all the worlds. She was grateful for that. 

She had seen Sansa out in the wood for days, directing her people, planning the decorations with the same kind of intensity with which she planned rationing or storage or weapon production in preparation for the war. Out of all the Starks, Daenerys still found Sansa the most difficult to read, but also the easiest to understand. They were not very much alike, she and Sansa, but they had experienced enough of the same kinds of horrors that there was a kind of sympathy that existed between them.

Sansa was still anxious about the alliance. She was still worried about relinquishing any of the power that she and Jon had seized back for their family. Daenerys understood that, even as she was relieved that her kingdom would be technically whole once again. Perhaps she would have been more wary of Sansa once, but she understood Sansa’s reservations now, after long conversations with Robb in the days they spent together on the road. 

She understood better now why Sansa was so quietly distrustful and opposed to the wedding that had seemed to Daenerys to have everything to recommend it. It wasn’t _just_ a wedding to Sansa, and it wasn’t just an alliance. It was a loss of power. It was a loss of the security and safety that Sansa had hoped for with the independence of the north. Dany understood; of course she understood. Security and safety had been all she had longed for once, and there was still a part of her that craved _more_ power and _more_ men to guard her; she knew all too well what it was like to be powerless, and she would do anything to prevent herself from experiencing that level of powerlessness again.

Perhaps that fact had something to do with why her first instinct had been to be suspicious of Sansa, or to assume that Sansa wanted power for the same reasons men wanted power. But Robb loved Sansa, and he was open about what Sansa had been through, and that allowed Dany to see so much more of Sansa than she would have seen otherwise. Dany understood what it was like when you had nothing and then gained it, steadily, becoming free from the fear that had shackled you when you were powerless. She understood how terrifying it could be to _lose_ that power, or even to _risk_ losing it. It hurt Dany’s pride to know that her future goodsister still didn’t fully trust her, but she knew why, and she could only hope that Sansa’s trust would come in time.

Sansa, standing off to the side of the heart tree beside Robb, was dressed in dark grey and black. She and Jon Snow both, standing together with Arya, who wore a tunic of brown and blue that was the most colorful item of clothing Daenerys could see on any of the gathered northerners. Her own people stood out. They wore their northern-style cloaks, but their clothing was their own, even though many of them shivered in the thin, bright fabric. It meant so much that they were here, and it meant so much to see them. She had had many homes in her life, but she was most at peace among her people. Wherever they were, she was at her strongest, and she was at her happiest, too.

It was a fairly small wedding ceremony. Missandei had been eager to plan something grand, but Daenerys found that she didn’t _want_ grandness. She wanted intimacy. She wanted it to feel like _family_. She knew it wasn’t entirely possible. It _was_ in many ways a marriage for love, but it was primarily a marriage of alliance, and that alliance needed to be witnessed. They needed his family and representatives from their northern lords. Her own family, her closest advisors and friends, and people from the lands she had conquered. But Daenerys had already lived so much of her life for other people. She wanted it to be as intimate as it _could_ be. Sansa and Missandei had done a wonderful job of making that desire a reality.

Dany walked past her people. She smiled as she did. She didn’t have to fake her happiness, but it was _important_ that they see that she was happy with her choice. As much as she wanted this day to be for her, she knew it wasn’t. Not fully. It was theirs, too. It belonged to all of her people. To the entire realm. The enormity of it had hit her at several points during the day. As she bathed. As she dressed. As she stood on Jorah’s arm under the archway of the door. They were reuniting Westeros to fight the dead. They were going to take her family’s throne back from Cersei Lannister. All of Westeros standing with her to end the reign of the Lannister queen. There were moments she could hardly wait to get started. There were moments when the enormity of this alliance and this marriage and these choices made her want to run back home, to that house with the red door, and hide under the blankets. Just a little girl. A lonely, quiet little girl who wasn’t queen of anything. A lost princess, that was all.

She didn’t turn, and she didn’t run. She wasn’t that little girl any longer. She kept walking.

Robb stood under the red-leafed branches of the heart tree. He had been scrubbed clean, his beard trimmed and his hair tamed. He looked little like the man she had first begun to fall in love with. _That_ man had been hollowed-out and weighed down by his guilt. Recovering still from wounds suffered before she met him. The man who stood and waited for her now, the man who was to be her husband, had grown more whole since they had met. He smiled more. He no longer faded away when the guilt hit him too strongly. He stood on his own. He was unwavering, bright, happy. She knew he’d had his doubts, as she had. She knew it wasn’t so easy for him to dismiss the horrors of his past. But, like her, he was marshalling the part of himself that wanted to run. He was choosing her in the same way she was choosing him: in spite of his fears. It was love, that choice. Daenerys was sure of it. 

She hardly listened to the ceremony. She said the right words when they were required, but she stumbled over a few. Laughed at herself after. She heard the gentle laughter of the crowd in response, and Varys looked quite pleased with it, afterward. He had told her more than once that Westeros didn’t want a cold ruler. They didn’t want someone who was difficult to reach. They wanted someone strong, but someone who they understood. They wanted someone above them, but not so far above them that they could not see her. They would like that she stumbled and smiled and laughed at herself. _They will love you if they feel they know you_ , Varys had said, and she could see the love in their eyes now. _That_ felt like home, too.

Robb was smiling a larger smile than she had ever seen on him, and she loved him. He kissed her when the vows were spoken, and she loved him. He gazed at her. Snowflakes were falling into his curls and melting there. She loved him then, too.

Her husband. The man she loved. How strange to do things in this order. To love and then wed, knowing already how she felt. How she _would_ feel. She had been so afraid on the day of her first wedding. She had been sure that she would die, or that she would fade away into nothing. Everything about the Dothraki had been unknown to her. Drogo had been cold and terrifying, hard as steel and leeching the warmth from her. It had been easy to forget that as the years passed, because she had grown to love him, but she had despaired at first. There was no despair this time, and she was sorry for all the women who would never know anything but terror on the day of their wedding. She was sorry for Sansa Stark and for what her own mother must have felt, being made to marry the brother she had not loved. She was sorry for women who had come before her, and for the ones who would no-doubt come after her.

_You can change that_ , she told herself. _You will be queen. You will rule. And you can break_ that _wheel, too._

The army of the dead did not exist. Cersei Lannister was dead or exiled and gone away. It was only her, Dany. The child she had been and the woman she had been forced to grow into. Every other outside part of her melted away until she was just the essential matter at her center. This was all she had wanted, once. A family. A place. A purpose.

The moment ended, because that was what moments did. The gathered watchers cheered, and Daenerys looked out at them. Missandei was crying happily, and Grey Worm had his arm through hers. She loved them for their union and for their support. Tyrion was smiling, looking as pleased with himself as if he was the one who thought of the alliance. Varys was grinning in a similar manner. She loved them, too, she realized. Though they annoyed her, she loved them still.

Ser Jorah was standing off to the side with a grim expression, but he bowed his head to her when she looked his way. He, too, was loved by her.

The Starks stood strong and sturdy, like the grey trees in their godswood, watching everything. Arya was playing with a knife in her hands. Flipping it around, seeming to ignore everything else. Sansa’s eyes were glimmering, and she held tightly to Jon Snow’s hand. Jon was smiling at her, amused or perhaps wistful. Bran was watching Dany. His smile was remote, distant, but it was there.

Brienne of Tarth stood watch over them in her armor. Jaime Lannister stood beside her. The Kingslayer. He had avoided Dany whenever he could. She was surprised to see him at her wedding. Then again, he had sworn himself so visibly to Sansa Stark. What better place to show everyone that he meant to do his duty?

He avoided her gaze here, as well, though she could not say if it was out of fear of what she would do, or if it was because he could not stop looking at the warrior woman beside him. She hated it when he did that, because it would be so much easier to hate him if she didn’t find their odd courtship so _amusing._ But perhaps it was for the best. Perhaps hate wasn’t what she should feel for him anyway; her father had been mad, and she still didn’t quite know why his youngest Kingsguard had turned on him, but she knew how circumstances could drive people to commit desperate acts, and she knew that she wanted to be the kind of person, the kind of queen, who would ask the right questions instead of making all the wrong assumptions.

When the Kingslayer had come to she and Robb, one of the first days after they set out from Dragonstone, and he had told them what he knew of his sister’s defenses, she had wondered at him. After he had gone, after he had given them all the information they could have wanted, she had mentioned it to Robb. She couldn’t think of a reason to trust his intentions.

“Why would he tell us?” she asked. “The stories say he loves his sister.”

“He does,” Robb answered. “But she isn’t the only one he loves, and he’s smarter than the stories say. He knows where this war is headed, and he knows he can’t save his sister. He’s telling us because there are people he _can_ save.”

Perhaps it was only the little girl inside her who had longed for something soft and pretty. Perhaps it was the decorations in the godswood. The soft lights from the torches. The way everything glittered and glimmered in the falling snow. The guests filtered back inside, and perhaps it was only their hushed whispers, the way they sounded as they went. Perhaps it was Robb’s hand in her own, and the way he looked back through the foggy trees with a rueful smile on his face.

Whatever it was, she saw love everywhere, in everybody.

_This_ , she thought, _is why I want to be queen. I love them, and I want them to be happy. I want them to fall in love. To live, to have children, to raise children, to teach their children how to build a better world. They’ll never be able to do it if their parents don’t survive. If their parents aren’t allowed to love whoever they want._

_This is why I want to be queen. This is why I_ must _win._

“Are you ready, husband?” she asked Robb. He turned his back on the trees, and he met her gaze. His smile was warm, full. He was not the same man she had met, and she was not the same woman.

“Yes,” he said. Firm. “I’m ready.”

* * *

There was, obviously, no wedding feast. Half the guests seemed confused, loitering around the great hall, whispering about the lack of music, but Daenerys and Robb moved quickly past them. Robb’s hand was tight in her own, but it loosened some when they were in the hallway, moving towards his rooms. When they were in his chamber, safely unmolested by anyone who would try and enact some of the traditions Daenerys had been warned about, he breathed out a shaking breath.

“It’s all right,” she said. She took off her fur cloak. The fire had been well tended to when they were outside. She went to Robb’s side and turned him to face her. He had been looking into the fire. He was shaken.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“You don’t have to be.”

“I didn’t think it would…”

“I know,” she said. She fumbled with the unfamiliar clasp on his cloak, but then she managed to lift it from his shoulders and let it fall to the ground.

“It wasn’t even my wedding,” he said. Her hands went to his waist, his hips. Holding him steady. His hands went first to her shoulders, then swept up her throat to her jaw. He held her face and looked at her. His hands were cold. “I just…sometimes I mix them up. Sometimes I don’t even remember my own.”

“I know,” she said, though she didn’t. But she knew what it was like to remember things incorrectly, and she knew what it was like to hurt from things that had happened long ago. “It’s over. It’s over.”

“We’re wed,” he said, and she nodded. She smiled up at him. She watched him soften before her eyes, watched him realize that no one was going to hurt them. She wished that she could help in some other ways. The dragon inside her simmered with a need to hurt the ones who had made him look so afraid. But she didn’t _need_ to be the dragon to help him. She only needed to be herself. The thought was _thrilling._

“Husband,” she said, and he smiled down at her. Crooked and still a little lost, but solid enough. He swept in and kissed her. His face and his hands were both cold, but they warmed quickly in the heat from the fire. He was gentler than any man she had ever kissed. Even Drogo, when he was gentlest with her, hadn’t been so careful. He took down her hair, first, letting it fall down her back. She helped him with his clothing. They were careful with each other. They had bedded each other already. Many times, on the road from Dragonstone. They were both already once wed, and there was no need to keep from each other when they loved each other.

But this felt different. The slowness of their movements. The care they took with each other. Dany felt choked with emotion. She had cried on her first weeding night, she remembered, but that was out of fear and discomfort and loneliness. Now it was just overwhelming. To hold and be held by someone she loved. She had spent so many years in between feeling lost. Bereft. Afraid. Now she was so devoid of any of those feelings that it seemed impossible.

_Please,_ she thought. _Let this husband live. Let me love him for longer than the last one._

When they were both bare before the fire, Daenerys could see his scars. She had touched them before. The places where the arrows had entered his chest and nearly killed him. She touched them again now, watching the way the shadows from the firelight made them look deeper. He could have died before ever meeting her, and she never would have known him. He was beautiful and brilliant and hers. He made her laugh. He made her want to be a better queen. He made her want so many things that she never thought to want again.

He was looking down at her, and she could see that he was thinking the same thing. She did not doubt him. She did not waste any time in that. She knew him. Her husband. Her love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Lament by Balmorhea


	55. Jaime VII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime and Bran speak

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aka the Jaime Discovers He Likes to be the Little Spoon chapter
> 
> I mean, you know, and he also talks to Bran. As always, a disclaimer is that I don't understand Bran's powers and probably never will.

The wedding had been over for some time. Jaime was in his small room, trying not to think about it.

He had never had much use for weddings, before. Why would he? The only woman he had ever loved was his sister, and he had sworn himself into the Kingsguard so young. What use were weddings to a man like him? Actually, they could be an acute kind of agony, if he let his guard down. When he was younger, and he still thought Cersei loved him enough that she might one day agree to run away with him, he would imagine it. And even as he got older and started to realize the impossibility of it, he would dream of it. Cersei would be in a beautiful red and gold dress. She would glimmer at the end of the aisle as she walked towards him. Myrcella and Tommen would be with her, escorting her. Joffrey would be, well, not there. It was _his_ fantasy _,_ after all. Not Cersei’s. She would smile at him when she saw him waiting for her. Some small sept in some faraway land. She would walk to him. They would say their vows. He would kiss her openly, in front of witnesses. No one would threaten them or the children. No one would need to know they were twins. They would live as husband and wife, and they would love one another openly.

Even in the beginning, they were silly dreams. Cersei turned him down every time he asked, and even _he_ wasn’t so thick or so romantic as to think she’d ever choose to leave every bit of power behind just for him. Even when she was at her most powerless, she hadn’t considered it. Even when she was at her most miserable with Robert, she had scorned Jaime’s foolish ideas of leaving together for somewhere new. But they were dreams he’d held close for such a long time that sometimes he fooled himself into believing they were possible.

He hadn’t thought of marriage in years, but seeing Brienne standing there in the snow…

He had known already that he loved her. But seeing her in the godswood opened up that part of himself that he thought he had buried completely.

He wanted to marry her.

He had spent the last nights of their journey north sleeping beside her in her tent. She had been hesitant to let him in, that first night, but she had not turned him away on any of the nights that followed, and he had pressed his advantage. They slept close together. It was easy to blame the cold, and perhaps that was why she didn’t mind his nearness. After everything he had done, after how he had hurt her with his attempts to secure himself a death he could be happy with, he simply wanted to be close to her. His love still hung there between them, denied and disbelieved. Hers hung there too, her own panicked attempts at deflection doing nothing to convince him that it didn’t exist. There was still so much to overcome, but it felt almost _possible_ when they were in her tent together. She looked at him as if she didn’t think he could see her. Like what passed between them there wouldn’t be remembered in the morning, although it always was. She touched his face, kept her fingers wrapped around his maimed wrist. She shivered when his fingers grazed over the skin of her pale throat, and when he kissed her knuckles. It was just _different_ there. Things were allowed that she never would have endured anywhere else. Every night he thought of kissing her, and every night he convinced himself that she needed to be the one to make that choice.

One morning, he had awoken to find her pressed against his back as he slept, her arm tucked around his waist. He had been warm, and hard already. Her breath on the back of his neck made it worse. He had lain there, his heart pounding.

He had known already that he loved her. He had known already that he wanted her. But the dream of it was one thing. Jaime was used to dreaming of things that he could not have. He had dreamed for so long of a love from his sister that was equal to the love he felt for her. For softness, for warmth, for _anything_ other than the scraps he had been given. _Treasured_ scraps, yes, but scraps all the same. He had learned to do without the things he wanted when he was young, because he learned early that life was not a song. What you wanted and what the world gave you were rarely the same. At least he had _had_ Cersei. At least she had offered him what love and affection she could. It was enough for him, for the Kingslayer made into a bitter old man before his time, angry and helpless at once. As a boy he’d dreamed of nicer things, but they were not the dreams of men, and his father and his tutors and the world had bled those dreams out of him, killing the boy he had been.

He felt like a boy again, in the tent that morning with Brienne nestled up behind him. He felt like a boy listening to a story or a song. A boy lying in bed dreaming of kissing his love, pulling her close, protecting her and being protected by her in turn. It was easy in the dim, cool light of morning to forget his aches and hurts and losses. It was easy to forget that he was lying on the ground, marching to a certain death. How difficult to think of anything but Brienne, when she was so big and solid and warm against him.

_Soft_ , too. She was soft. He was half turned onto his stomach, and she was half draped over him, her body pressing him into the ground just enough that he felt surrounded by her. She had slept curled beside him before, when the Mummers took his hand and the fever made him shiver long into the night. But she had never slept with this abandonment of her own protection. She was boneless and close and there was no tension in her body at all. It felt like _trust_. It felt like love, too. He stared at the wall of the tent beside him. He was too old for this. He was too old for new discoveries about himself, for falling in love again. He had loved poorly. He had loved wrong. He had loved too much and too destructively. There should not be room inside him now for this. This welling warmth. This blanketed safety that being with Brienne brought.

He had always been Cersei’s protector. Cersei’s sword.

_If I were a woman, I would be Cersei,_ he had told himself, for years and years. _If Cersei were a man, she would be me._

But Cersei was not a man. She needed _him_ to be the man she was not. And so he had been. She had wrapped their love in pretty words about being the same person, the same soul, the perfection and completion of one another, and he had loved her, and so he had believed her. He had always been her Jaime. He was strong. He was hard when he had to be. He was cruel when he had to be. He pushed boys out windows, and he marched off to kill old women for Cersei’s petty grudges, and he never questioned or doubted or stopped to think about his actions. What was there to think about? There was only Cersei.

He couldn’t be that man anymore. Cersei’s Jaime. Cruel and sarcastic and biting. He didn’t _want_ to be that man. He wanted to be the man he felt like when he woke in Brienne’s tent, with her beautiful bulk warm and half atop him. He wanted to be the kind of man who allowed that swelling warmth in his chest. The blockage in his throat, suddenly. The overwhelming nature of the safety. He wanted to be the kind of man who _welcomed_ that.

Cersei would have scorned him. His father would have been disgusted with him. Even Tyrion would have laughed at him. _Safe_ , they would have jeered. _Why do you need to feel safe? You are meant to be strong. You are meant to be a knight, a lord, a protector._ She _is the anomaly, not you. She’s meant for dresses and embroidery, not swords and scars. She has corrupted you. She has changed you. You should show her what it’s like to be a woman, and you should show her that you are a_ man.

It was easy to call their voices to mind, and it was easy to hear their jeering questions, but it _wasn’t_ easy to answer them.

_Why?_ Why did he need to feel safe? Why did it feel so _good_ to feel safe with someone else? So trusted? He didn’t _know_. He just knew that with Brienne, he didn’t have to try. He didn’t have to be anyone but the man she wanted him to be. It was the same man that _he_ had always wanted to be but had buried for years beneath someone else. She had found him, somehow. Unearthed him. Her regard and her hopes and her expectations gave him the excuse he never had to try and _be_ that man. Everyone else in his life had done their best to twist and mold that man into something else. Break off the useless bits of him that didn’t serve them. Shame him into changing himself into the man that they thought he should be. But Brienne…She held him in her sleep like he was a man worthy of protection, and he had never been that man before.

_My protector_. Hadn’t he called her that once, to someone? He remembered thinking the words. _My protector._ She had protected him when Locke cut off his hand. He remembered little from those first days, but he remembered her. She was strong. Stronger than he had been. He wept into her shoulder at night, and she only held him tighter. She had not scorned him or laughed at him or pushed him away. She shushed him, murmured to him. She’d hated him, but still she had cared for him.

He paced his small room after the wedding. There wasn’t much room for it. He knew he should go back down there, but he’d had to excuse himself before he made an utter mess of things by actually going up to her and speaking to her. He hated being here, in this castle. He’d much rather be freezing in a tent outside if it meant that she was with him. This small room was too big without anyone else inside it. It made him worry too much. Where was she? What was she thinking? Would she ever believe him, or had he too long been the man his family had made of him?

He felt restless. Unsettled in a way he hadn’t been in weeks. Not the frenetic despair that had seeped into him during the battle, and not the listlessness of after. Just…restless. Like there was something missing.

There was a cawing, and a bird landed on his sill. A raven, carrying something in its beak. It dropped it, and the small note fluttered to the floor.

_Godswood_ , it read.

Jaime looked up at the bird again. It regarded him impassively. Jaime sighed.

“Fine,” he said.

* * *

Bran Stark waited for him beneath the heart tree. The torches had all been extinguished, so he was sitting in the dark.

It could not have been more ominous.

_Is he finally going to kill me, then?_ Jaime wondered.

“Jaime Lannister,” Bran said. “I did not expect you to come.”

What little Jaime knew of Bran’s return, he had heard from Sansa in letters that were often chiefly of other things. There were snippets relating to Bran’s oddness. Little hints that the boy wasn’t the same. When Jaime had seen him waiting with the other Starks in Winterfell’s courtyard, it had been all that Jaime could to do greet him. His palm had been clammy and cold with nervous sweat. He had remembered vividly the feel of the boy’s tunic in his hand as he grabbed it. Could remember the look of horror on the boy’s face as he pushed him. Sansa had claimed in her letters that Bran was the one who wanted Jaime’s worst crime covered up. She had claimed that Bran _wanted_ Jaime to be accepted by the northern army. Why? Sansa hadn’t been sure, and Jaime couldn’t figure it out either. He’d gotten no answers when they met in the courtyard. Bran had merely nodded and smiled, and Jaime had known that there would be more to come. Apparently this was it.

“You sent for me,” he said.

“I did,” Bran said. “But you could have ignored me.” Jaime forced himself to continue walking so that he could stand directly in front of Bran. He hated it out here, in the godswood. This was a place for Starks, and he was not a Stark.

Bran was looking up at him. The remoteness of his expression was difficult to look at. Difficult to look at Bran at all and not feel the guilt of his past choices. More difficult now that Bran had been so changed. Perhaps it would have been rough to face a Bran who was entirely himself, who could hate Jaime for what Jaime had done to him. But this…

“Why did you come?” Bran asked. Jaime considered his answer carefully.

“Because I am trying,” he started slowly. “To make up for what I have done. What I did to you…”

“It was in the past,” Bran said. “I’m not the same person I was.”

“Nor am I.”

“Everything you did, you did for love. To protect your family. To protect your sister. That man hasn’t changed. You would still protect the ones you love. And yet you regret it.” 

“My children are dead anyway. And my sister is lost to me. Of course I regret it.”

“And a boy nearly died,” Bran said. “A boy was left crippled.”

Jaime winced at the term, and he could not help but look down at his stump. He’d said something to that effect, hadn’t he? The day after he pushed Bran. Something about not wanting to live if he was going to be crippled. He had been saying for so long that he wasn’t the same man who pushed Bran Stark. So often and so vehemently that it had stopped meaning anything. But it was true, wasn’t it? He had survived a thing that would have been unthinkable to him before. He had lingered even when he thought that he should have been allowed to die a clean death and be forgotten.

“Yes,” he finally said. “And I am sorry for that.”

“You are,” Bran said flatly. It was impossible to tell if it was a question or a statement. His expression was still unreadable. Calculating, in a way, although barely even _that_.

“Yes,” Jaime said. “My family. My father. My sister. I…”

He trailed off. What use was it, to describe it to this boy? This creature? Whatever it was that Bran had become, he would either understand or he wouldn’t. Jaime had lived his life for his family, and he had not done enough to question them when it would have made a difference. Any explanations he could offer would be little better than excuses, and they would not be worthy ones.

“You didn’t ask me here to talk about that,” he said.

“No.”

“Then why did you?”

“You say you’ve changed, but you fear you haven’t. I asked you to come because you need to understand that you have. The Lion of Lannister died at Highgarden. Only Jaime Lannister remains. You were both men, once. Just as I am both Bran and the Three Eyed Raven.”

“I don’t think it’s like that at all,” Jaime couldn’t help but quip. “Being the Lion of Lannister never gave me much in the way of powers.”

“Didn’t it?” Bran asked. “It gave you strength. Certainty that you no longer have. A reputation that struck fear into the hearts of anyone who dared oppose you. It gave you much, but you still have much to offer. Lion of Lannister. Kingslayer. _Ser Jaime_. You have been many men, but no longer.”

“They were all me. They were always me.”

“No. They weren’t. But I understand why you would say so. Only _you_ would have the strength to come here.”

“Why _am_ I here?” Jaime could not help but ask. Why did Bran think he had come? Why did Bran think he was fighting? It wasn’t bravery. It wasn’t a choice. It was honor. It was the right thing. It was…

“Love,” Bran said. It was startling to hear it. “It’s why you do anything.”

Was that something to be embarrassed by? Perhaps it was. Jaime felt himself flushing and looking down at his stump again. Yes. It was why he did anything. Was he so predictable? Had he changed so little? Love was why he pushed Bran Stark from that window, and love was why he was here now. Was that all he was? A man who loved?

“I am here for honor,” he said. “Because I swore an oath to your mother to protect your sisters. And because it is the right thing to do.”

“Yes,” Bran agreed passively. “Love is many things for you. Honor. Innocence. Faith. You are a knight who wishes he was a better one. You are a man who means to fulfill an oath no one expects you to keep. You want to believe in the stories that Bran Stark always liked best. You’re here because you think it’s your fate to die in this war, and you think you may as well die honorably and well, if you could not live your life that way. It isn’t only love of others that drives you.”

Jaime made himself nod. He _was_ embarrassed. To be so seen.

“You should not give up hope,” Bran said. From anyone else, Jaime would have said it was blind optimism, but something told him that blind optimism was not one of Bran’s faults. “There are many paths. This is one. You may see the end of these wars.”

That seemed impossible to Jaime. What would he even _do_ afterward?

Then again, he had thought the same thing during the battle at Highgarden. He had thought the same thing when he returned to Cersei after Riverrun and the Sept. He thought the same thing when he lost his hand. He had thought it when he realized he was going to kill Aerys. He had not been able to imagine surviving any of those things, but he _had._ Surely there could be an after for _this_ , too.

“It doesn’t matter,” he found himself saying. “It doesn’t matter if I survive. It only matters if we succeed.”

“Yes,” Bran agreed. “You are forgiven.”

Startled by the change in conversation, Jaime frowned at him.

“I shouldn’t be,” he said. “And if you aren’t Bran Stark, as you keep saying, then you don’t have the right to forgive me for him.”

“Maybe not. But I am enough of Bran Stark to know. It is difficult to hate a man when you understand him, and Bran Stark knew. Not at first. You terrified at him at first. But then he knew.”

Jaime flinched at that. He couldn’t look into this creature’s eyes any longer. If he had never pushed Bran Stark from that tower, Bran Stark would still be a boy.

“I needed to become this,” Bran said, as if he had read Jaime’s thoughts.

“He was only a boy,” Jaime snapped. “It shouldn’t have been him.”

“Perhaps not, but it had to be him,” Bran said. Jaime shook his head. “He forgives you anyway.”

“He shouldn’t,” Jaime said. He wanted to walk away. He didn’t want to hear this. He didn’t want to be forgiven.

“You’ve forgiven things you shouldn’t have before,” Bran said. The sept. Jaime flinched again.

“I haven’t,” he said. “I didn’t forgive it. It was unforgivable. I didn’t stay with her because I _forgave_ her.”

“I wasn’t talking about one action. I was talking about everything. Years of it. You looked the other way. Your sister. Your father. Even your brother. They all did and said things you could not support. They were cruel, and they made moves against innocents that made you wonder if there was even a point to knighthood if men like you were just going to sully it with inaction. Aerys. You looked the other way when he killed Bran Stark’s uncle and grandfather.”

Jaime could not respond to that. It was true. He had stood by. When Rhaella screamed. When Aerys laughed. When people burned in front of him.

“I didn’t do enough,” he said.

“You never told anyone. Not until the bath at Harrenhal.” Jaime was silent. Stubbornly, perhaps.

_Who would have believed me? I was sitting on the throne as my father sacked the city. Who would have believed that I killed Aerys for any reason other than my family’s power?_

And if they had…

Elia and Rhaenys and Aegon murdered horrifically by his father’s own men. Rhaella raped by her cruel husband. Terrified, screaming. Rickard and Brandon Stark dying afraid, in pain, while Jaime stood and did _nothing_.

He could bear their scorn and their ridicule. He could bear to be called _Kingslayer_ behind his back. He could bear knowing that he had done a noble thing that no one would ever know the truth of. He could _not_ bear to be praised for it. It hadn’t been enough. What did it matter if the scorn was for the right reason or the wrong? It was still deserved.

“I don’t care if they know,” he said. Bran very kindly did not contest that, though he smiled slightly, which felt like the same thing.

“You were strong enough to do the right thing once,” Bran said. “You made a choice to stop an evil man even though you knew it would lead to condemnation. Even though it was painful. Are you strong enough now?”

“No,” Jaime answered. “I won’t kill her.”

“You don’t have to. You just have to realize that there is no saving her.”

Jaime shook his head at that. He stared at Bran. This emotionless creature who pretended to be Bran. What did he understand about love? What did he understand about Jaime and his sister? What did he understand about the kind of devotion that Jaime had had for Cersei for years? Even if he couldn’t support her any longer. Even if he couldn’t go back to her. Even if he no longer wanted the same things. He couldn’t just let her _die_. Not without trying to save her.

“The Night King needs to be stopped because he is a destabilizing influence,” Bran said carefully. His gaze was steady. “Your sister is the same. The realm will burn as long as she’s in charge.”

“She’s,” Jaime started. Ready to make her excuses. He couldn’t.

“She isn’t willing to stop. She isn’t willing to change. She doesn’t regret. That’s the difference,” Bran said. “You do. That’s why you have a chance.” Jaime didn’t argue this time. He thought of her, in Kings Landing. The way she used to be. Waiting for him. Soft in his arms. But that wasn’t her anymore, was it? Remembering her that way…he wasn’t remembering her in truth. He was remembering what he wanted to remember. “She’ll never be the woman you remember,” Bran said. “She never was, and you know that.” Jaime couldn’t look at him. He couldn’t even muster up the energy to be annoyed at how easily Bran had seen him. He only shook his head.

“Even if she isn’t. I can’t…”

“You don’t have to,” Bran said again. “No one will ask you to. You only have to stay.”

He was so certain and steady. Steady like Brienne when she looked at him and said that he would leave her and go back to Cersei. Certain like Tyrion when he said the same. Everyone expected it of him. _Everyone_. Bran didn’t, though. Bran seemed to know how impossible the choice was. How monumental it was for him to make it: Jaime had never willingly abandoned Cersei before.

But Bran expected it, too. He made it simple. _You forsake Cersei, or you give up everything else._

When he put it that way, it was easy.

“I’ll do what I have to,” he said, and Bran nodded.

“You will,” he agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Wide-Eyed by Cold Weather Company


	56. Cersei IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cersei and Euron discuss what he brings to an alliance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alright, off to a promising start, posting a chapter at 9:30 am. Hopefully there will be more to come!

Euron Greyjoy could not be less to her tastes if he tried to be. _Clownish_ was the kindest word Cersei would have used to describe him. He swaggered like a much more important man, made several crude gestures, and spoke flippantly of losing control of the Iron Islands to his niece and nephew all within the first few minutes of his arrival. Since his fleet was the only reason Cersei was even allowing him in her throne room, it struck her as a rather bold attempt at tricking her into overlooking his most fatal of faults, and she had no patience for it.

“What good are you without your islands?” she wondered, and Euron laughed. Qyburn was frowning at her, trying to catch her attention so he could signal something to her. She ignored him. It was difficult to tell what Qyburn was thinking these days, because he was always so disapproving of everything she did. Whether she listened to his advice or not. Whether she deferred to him or told him off. _Always_ he wore that worried frown, and she was tired of trying to appease it. What gave him the right to look at her that way? He was _her_ Hand. He existed to serve her, much the same way as her Mountain did. He had known that once, and that was why she had chosen him. He could do with a reminder that Cersei could easily find another man to serve her. Perhaps she would spread her _own_ whispers. Let him think that she was looking for a replacement for him _._ Perhaps that might frighten him back into compliance.

“I have loftier ambitions,” Euron said. He was leering at her. As if she would not notice. As if it did not _matter_ if she noticed. _Men_. They came in different trappings. They spoke in different tongues. At their core, they were all the same, and she loathed them.

_Jaime…_

Jaime had been different, but he was lost. She would not think of him.

_Joffrey…_

No. Joffrey had been a terrifying little monster. Her son. She had loved him. She mourned him still. But he was a man like any of them. The way he had _hated_ her sometimes. The way he had mocked her tears for Jaime, and the way he had _frightened_ her…

_Euron Greyjoy means to marry me_. That seemed obvious. Men were men. She was older than she had been. Her close-cropped hair gave her a severe look that she hated when she caught sight of it in the mirror. She wasn’t a soft maiden any longer. She could not toss her curls and flutter her eyelashes and pout alluringly. Even if she _could,_ she would not want to. She was too tired for that. But men were men, and they wanted power, and power was the one thing she still had that could entice a man so lecherous. She was still beautiful. She knew that too. But it was not the kind of beauty that men craved. It was the kind of beauty that men whispered about, but they wanted softer things to fuck. Weaker things, too. She tilted her chin up. The throne on its dais put her above him, physically above him, and she was glad. He should know his place.

“Loftier ambitions,” she drawled. Her eyebrows ticked up lazily. She would not show him anything on her face. It was carved of marble, the lines smoothed out by powder and by the control she had over her expression. His boldness and irreverence meant that he did not think her as powerful as she was: he thought her desperate. He didn’t care if she was disgusted with him. He didn’t care if she was angry. He thought that she _needed_ him. He thought that she would accept him in whatever state he was offered.

_If Jaime was here…_

Jaime wasn’t. She could not rely on him to throw Euron to the floor and cut his throat. It was Jaime as a boy she pictured. Jaime, seventeen, newly raised to the Kingsguard. Jaime strong and valiant and so completely hers. He had given up everything for her. He would have given her all the rest, too, if the dragon queen hadn’t taken him.

_Jaime would kill him, if he was here_.

Yes, Jaime would kill Euron for his disrespect. He would kill him out of jealousy, too. She would pretend at anger for his shortsightedness, and maybe she would even feel it, just a bit, but she would also feel that shiver down her spine that she used to feel when he wore his love and devotion so openly. The sneer on his face. The cutting remark he would growl out before he did it.

But Jaime wasn’t with her. Jaime was gone. Only Qyburn sat beside her. He was a quailing old man who could work wonders, but the thought of him trying to kill Euron Greyjoy for her was laughable.

The Mountain, of course, would serve. He would rip Euron limb from limb if she ordered it, but there would be no passion in the deed, and that was what she wanted. She didn’t _want_ a passionless creature under her thrall. She wanted someone who would be so mad with devotion for her that he would do _anything_.

_You had that, and you drove him away_. She silenced that voice inside her. Her unwelcome guest.

Euron was still smiling at her. His lecherousness only grew more pronounced as they stared at one another, neither one wanting to speak first. He thought, like all men thought, that he would win her, regardless of the fact that he had nothing to offer. Or maybe he didn’t think he would win her at all. Maybe he believed she would continue to hate him. He thought she would marry him regardless, and hand over the reins to her kingdom. Perhaps that would be an even greater victory for the shameless wretch. To have her captured, snarling and hissing like a caged and declawed lioness. He could try it. She felt more than usually centered today. Her anger simmered safely beneath her skin. It didn’t flare. It was in no danger of making her do anything rash. It felt more like the cold calculation of her father’s hate than the fiery temper of Jaime’s.

Euron Greyjoy was a nothing of a man. A gnat. She had courted him for his islands and for those rumors about a horn, but if he had none of that to show her, then that meant she didn’t need him. She could string him up with the others. The crows had gone hungry the past few days. Her citizens had been terrified into compliance. Any sign of rebellion had been met with execution. She paid her spies in fish and food, and so they turned on each other like beasts, giving her Goldcloaks their brothers and sisters and neighbors to be hung above the walls of the city. The strongest were raised up and made into Goldcloaks to serve her. They were the ones who didn’t care that their fellows starved as long as _they_ weren’t starving. The message was clear: loyalty will be rewarded, and dissent will be punished. The peace would not last. It was a bluff that would not hold forever. But it was strong enough for now, and more fear would hopefully strengthen it for a time.

What message would Euron send? Probably not much of one. He was nothing to anyone in this city. His people were all on their hard, windswept islands, convincing themselves that their raping and pillaging was a noble way of life just because it was difficult. They bored her and disgusted her in equal measure. She could have him cut into pieces and thrown into the ocean. Perhaps some fish would find him easier to digest than she would.

_And yet you_ do _need him_ , a voice reminded her. A petty, smug inner voice that she hated. _Think of your enemies. They are all that’s left. There are no more allies except for him._

What would Tywin Lannister have done?

She didn’t know.

She _did_ know. Her father never would have found himself in this position. He would have somehow found a way out before getting to this precipice

_No. Father would have fallen into the same traps. He would have made the same mistakes. He never would have become king._

_Father never would have used wildfire._

_No, he wouldn’t. Father would know not to make enemies of his own people._

_He had Elia Martell raped and murdered. Her_ children _murdered. Father made plenty of mistakes, and he made plenty of enemies._

_Mistakes? He never paid for that crime. It wasn’t a mistake at all. The only crime he ever paid for was not loving that monstrous little imp._

She took a steadying breath that she kept small, contained. She couldn’t let Euron Greyjoy see that she needed it. He was watching her so carefully. It would be a mistake to underestimate him. His peacocking reminded her of an odious version of the preening that Oberyn Martell used to do. Endless amusement and oblivious pleasure hiding the sharp mind behind pretty, gauzy distractions. Euron’s charms were much less charming, but it was easy to see how it might be the same idea. He was plainly investigating her. He wasn’t discomfited by her long pause or her waiting stare. He was _amused_. She could feel her lip curling in response.

“I ask you again,” she said. “What use are you to me if you no longer have your islands or your fleet?”

“I still have ships,” Euron answered. He started to walk closer, raising one boot to place it on the bottom step of the dais, but The Mountain shifted, his armor creaking, and Euron thought better of it. Cersei finally smiled. Greyjoy didn’t show his fear, but she could smell it on him. There wasn’t a single man who wasn’t afraid of The Mountain. Even Jaime had eyed him each time he came to Cersei’s rooms. She had liked that. The obvious thrill of fear the creature gave him. The way it brought Jaime back into his own eyes for a few moments, before the blankness inevitably came back to enrage her.

_I did this to The Mountain_ , his presence told any man who dared come near her. _I could do this to you, too. So behave yourself._

“I have ships as well,” Cersei answered. In truth, not many remained to her, but the crown had seized enough merchant vessels to defend the Blackwater against most naval attacks. If Yara Greyjoy truly was aligned with the dragon queen, there was no telling what kind of coinage had been spent on their fleets and on weapons meant for use against her defenses. Cersei had seen demonstrations of techniques from across the sea before, when Robert was alive. He’d never had much interest in naval warfare, but he loved to watch things being destroyed, like most little boys did. If Yara Greyjoy had that kind of naval power, it might be cause for concern, but Cersei still had wildfire. Tyrion had used it to great effect in a naval battle once. Cersei would do the same.

Besides, it was hard to consider Yara Greyjoy much of a threat. If Cersei knew anything about the men of the Iron Islands, Yara would find herself ruling a band of idiots who wouldn’t want to acknowledge her power. She would have more of a struggle than Cersei did; she would be overthrown within the year, even _with_ the support of the dragon queen. Although perhaps that was an avenue. Kill Euron and send him in a pretty box back to his niece. Offer an alliance. Give those iron cretins a war to fight to distract them from their disdain of anything without a cock. There were stories about Yara’s predilections, and Cersei had tired of men. Perhaps it was a woman she should align herself with next. Why not? She was queen. She could do as she pleased. Perhaps Westeros would be less bothered by a woman consort than one who was her own brother.

Perhaps not. But that was what her Goldcloaks were for, and if she could control the fleet of the Iron Islands…

“You don’t have any ships like mine,” Euron promised. Even eyeballing The Mountain, he was still more confident than any man should be. She rolled her eyes. She’d heard boasts like that before.

_Jaime used to boast like that,_ she thought. _Before he lost his hand along with whatever it was that made me want him. He never boasted like that afterward._ It was as if his hand had contained every good thing that Jaime possessed, and when it was gone, it took the best parts of him with it.

“So you bring me a few ships, apparently _good ships_ , and think to have _loftier ambitions_?” she asked. She leaned back against the throne. She’d had the sharper points filed down so they didn’t prick her when she touched the armrests. Men really _did_ look for ways to suffer, didn’t they? To prove themselves. To gain something. They should have tried being born a woman. Then they wouldn’t have to fight in wars or sit in poorly designed thrones to learn about pain. They’d already know suffering. They should try giving birth. Try bleeding and constant cramping. Try being married off to a man who was more interested in whores, and who drunkenly bruised and injured without care for anyone’s wants but his own.

“I didn’t _just_ bring the ships,” Euron said. “I brought you your horn.”

Cersei’s eyebrows rose higher before she could help herself. She heard Qyburn shifting in the seat beside the throne. The last time she spoke to Euron Greyjoy, he had promised her the horn. _It can control dragons_ , he had said. It had sounded like a farce, but he had showed her maps and records. For someone who appeared to take so little seriously, he had done his research. He had hunted for it. Sacrificed for it. He was reluctant to give it to just _anybody._ She had understood that language: the language of trade. Bargain. She had promised him nearly everything if he could bring it to her. Qyburn had thought the whole thing madness, but he’d been intrigued enough. Her Hand was a curious man. He never allowed things to pass without examining the possibilities of them.

“And you’re certain it will work?” she asked.

“Yes,” Euron replied, smiling. He knew he had trapped her. “My queen.”

Cersei’s lips twisted into an attempted smile that still writhed with disgust. This changed things. If he could control the dragons…

If he could control the dragons, he would take the power of the dragon queen’s army away from her. The dragons would turn on Daenerys. And if he was aligned with Cersei, then Cersei would be the one to control them. She would burn them all to ash, and she would be left the uncontested ruler.

With a loathsome king beside her.

She had done it before. And with Qyburn and The Mountain on her side, she thought that she could do it again. If it meant that the dragons would be hers…

_If only it were Jaime who found the horn. He would never betray me. I cannot count on Euron Greyjoy for that._

“We’ll talk more on this soon,” she told Euron. “In the meantime, I hope you and your men are comfortable in the quarters you have been provided.”

It was a courtesy as much as it was a warning to him to have patience, and Euron blessedly understood. He nodded his head into a bow that was almost _not_ insolent.

“Of course,” he said. “Until then, my queen.”

She sneered at him again, and he laughed as he walked away, and she could still hear him chuckling as he left the throne room.

Qyburn stood. He moved in front of her, and he waited for her reaction. He was nearly cringing, the little monster.

Jaime, she thought, would have been furious. He would have demanded that she send Euron away. He would have raged. Said that they could find some other way to win. He would have done anything to make sure that she did not have to marry again.

But Jaime wasn’t with her any longer. Jaime was a prisoner again, far away from her, and yet again he had taken too long to get back. He could not have any say in this.

Wherever he was, surely Jaime was trying everything he could. Surely he was fighting his captors. Trying to escape. Trying to return to her side, where he knew he belonged.

When he did, it would be too late again. She knew that already. She would resist as long as she could, but the horn…it was too important. She needed it. If she was going to stand up against the dragon queen, she needed _him_. Euron. Jaime. Her father.

No. She didn’t _need_ any of them. She needed what Euron brought to her, but she didn’t need _him._ She was a queen. She ruled Westeros _alone._ A woman on the throne. Unmarried. Unshackled. Let the dragon queen return and try to take her city. She would find Cersei Lannister more difficult to displace than Robert Baratheon would have been. No matter what happened next with Daenerys Targaryen, history books would always say that Cersei Lannister was there before her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Hurt by 2WEI


	57. Brienne VIII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brienne and Sansa chat about Jaime.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> idk I'm exhausted, i don't have anything funny to say here. So I hope you all are continuing to enjoy!

Lady Sansa was tired. Brienne had learned to recognize the signs. It wasn’t always easy, because Sansa was so good at hiding everything. She was especially good at hiding what she considered weaknesses. She always kept her chin up and her back straight, no matter how much her energy waned. She _had_ to; she was a young woman trying to marshal older men who would see a young woman’s every action as weak where their own equal actions were not.

The lords that Sansa spent most of the day meeting with had all been slumped in their seats or yawning insolently by the end of their discussions, but not Sansa. She always kept herself quietly perfect until she had retreated back behind the door of her bedroom. Only then did she allow any signs of her exhaustion to show.

Brienne admired Sansa for many reasons. Sansa wasn’t quite like Lady Catelyn in most respects. She spoke more smoothly. She controlled her emotions where Lady Catelyn had been openly fiery. She had a coolness that Brienne had been assured by the servants was _entirely northern._ The smallfolk loved their northern princess. She was soft enough and had enough of the south in her to be her mother’s daughter, but hard and strong enough to be her father’s as well. Robb had inherited his mother’s temper and his father’s sense of justice, but for Sansa it was her father’s calm and her mother’s desire to protect her family. The smallfolk loved them both for it, and so did Brienne.

One way in which Sansa and her mother were so alike was _this:_ they trusted Brienne enough to let their exhaustion show in front of her. It had been an honor when it was Lady Catelyn who showed her true, tired face behind everything else, and it was an honor now that it was Sansa who did the same.

With Lady Catelyn, her exhaustion had been awe-inspiring, somehow. She was so busy, trying to get her son to listen to reason, or trying to make an impact with his men, who never wanted to listen to her. She was strong and unbowed and _regal_ , and yet so warm and motherly at once. Her exhaustion was always a surprise when it finally appeared on her face and in her posture. Sansa’s exhaustion just made Brienne _worried_ for her; she wanted Sansa to rest. She wanted Sansa to take a few moments for herself. She hated that Sansa felt like she needed to handle everything herself when there were so many people around her who would take any burden she allowed them.

Ever since Robb had married Daenerys, Sansa had been busier than ever. Daenerys came with an army, and she was seen by many as taking the north’s independence away. A conquering made only a bit prettier by the marriage that started it. Sansa had done her best to make the wedding ceremony as beautiful and obviously _chosen_ as she could, but many of the northern lords had set their hearts on independence. Many of their sons and their men and their families had fought and died for it. Sansa’s gentle reminders that their king would have power and that Daenerys was not going to be another Joffrey Baratheon had not done enough to persuade them. They were willing to share their food stores and their furs and their tradeable goods on the word of Bran Stark and Jon Snow and the yet-unmet threat of the Night King, but they remained steely-cold when it came to trust. Sansa’s unwavering, cool-headed optimism and certainty were necessary. Few men, even the most intractable among them, had been able to withstand the force of her level-headed certainty. 

Robb, too, was doing his best to retain their trust. Brienne had feared that he would lose himself in love the way he was said to have done with the Talisa, but Robb had allowed himself only a single day of being immersed in his new marriage before he joined his sister in the council meetings, adding his voice to hers. He had leveled out significantly since they had last dealt with him as their king. The northern lords remembered the lost, distant young man who returned to them after being declared dead, and they saw how different that man had been from the man who faced them now after moons away at Dragonstone and Highgarden. They heard of his valor in battle and they heard of his strength in the negotiations. Stories began to spread, probably by Varys or Tyrion or perhaps even Davos, who had proven to have a good head for these kinds of things: Daenerys had demanded that Robb bend the knee, and Robb had not. Robb had held out for an offer that would benefit the north.

Together, Sansa and Robb had deftly persuaded the lords to see this marriage as a victory rather than a concession. There were still outliers, and the ones who had reluctantly agreed still needed constant reassurances, but the siblings had accomplished much since they started working together.

Tyrion, too, had not been idle. He had Daenerys performing obvious acts of kindness to the people of Wintertown. It worked on the peasants and the smallfolk, because they cared little _why_ the acts of kindness were being done, only that they had food and furs when before they’d had none. That kind of thing was less likely to endear her to the lords, because what would have worked on the nobility of Kings Landing was considered insulting pandering to the lords in the north. But Robb and Jon and Sansa and Bran and even Lady Arya, when she could be bothered, were all the picture of Stark propriety, and their staid determination to prepare for the battle to come outbalanced the imagined insult of Daenerys and her goodwill towards the peasants. 

Brienne was perhaps biased, but Sansa was the steadiest of all of them. She worked out problems with their grain stores and with their watch schedules and with the clashes between different families and different armies. She worked closely with Missandei, the translator who served Daenerys, to ensure that cultural clashes remained at a minimum. She was patient and only showed her annoyance with the entitlement of her lords and ladies behind closed doors, to Brienne or her siblings or her cousin.

Or to Jaime.

The Lady of Winterfell and the Lion of Casterly Rock were under scrutiny everywhere they went, so of course Sansa made certain to claim him openly as a friend. He had been announced to the council of the lords as her _guest_ , as well as her new sworn sword, and he had been given a room in the castle to cement his place. His reputation as a turncoat was, as he kept reminding everyone, well deserved, but at least he had turned toward _them_ , and most of the lords found it difficult to truly argue against his presence, especially as the Lannister army was well-equipped and loyal to their commander. They bemoaned his lack of honor and his horrible deeds and the fact that he was a Lannister, but Varys and Tyrion had done well in spreading their stories of his _good_ deeds, as well. Brienne had heard more than a few people retelling the tale of her _protected virtue_ and the fact that he gave her a sword to find the Stark girls and restore them to Winterfell. According to a _very_ amused Tyrion, the encampments were filled with minstrels singing a song called _Two Swords_ , an apparently ribald song about Jaime and Brienne herself. She’d been sure her reputation would suffer as a result, but it had only gained her _admirers_. She may not have believed Jaime about his feelings just yet, but there was no mistaking his grumbling annoyance every time some Free Folk man pointed her out across the courtyard to his friends with a leering grin.

“There are songs about your fight with The Hound, as well,” Tyrion had noted one morning, and Brienne had later seen Sandor Clegane grumbling as he showed some children his missing ear while Arya and Sansa laughed together off to the side.

Though it had been unintentional, Brienne’s continued endorsement of and obvious care for Jaime had made him much more welcomed than he would have been otherwise, but it was Sansa’s friendship that made the true difference. She and Jaime made a point of public conversation. They walked together on the battlements. They strategized together. Sansa included him in all their war planning meetings, where Robb and Jon and The Blackfish and Grey Worm and several Free Folk veterans all pored over maps and tried to figure out the best way to face the army of the dead.

There had been whispers already that the Stark daughter and the Lannister heir would make a good match. Sansa dismissed them handily, and Jaime laughed in the face of anyone who suggested it, but still Brienne heard it discussed often as a possibility.

She knew better than to give any credence to those rumors. It would have been hard to believe them anyway, but she could not ignore the way Sansa smiled at her so pointedly every time she mentioned Jaime, nor the way she conspired with a less-than-perfectly-innocent tone to leave Jaime and Brienne often alone together.

And it wasn’t as if Brienne didn’t appreciate it. She still hardly knew how to feel about Jaime’s constant presence. She was used to missing him, thinking of him fondly, hoping he was faring well. Having him always nearby was a new sensation. Startling somehow every time she saw him. He always found her when it was time to eat. He often seemed to be going for walks when she was on watch outside Sansa’s door. He walked her to her room at night when their shifts were over. He smiled at her. He smiled at her _constantly._ He always stood just outside her door on those occasions, very correct and polite and never once suggesting anything untoward, though of course his very presence made her think of it. She wondered what it would be like to invite him in, but she never did. She always closed and locked her door with him on the other side of it. She always crawled under her furs and remembered the feel of him pressed against her in the cold. She always dreamed of him.

Night after night on the road, he had nestled closer in sleep. She had always longed to do it when she was awake. They had talked quietly, their heads resting on their packs, very near each other. Their shared heat had warmed the space between them quickly, because there was so little of it to warm. She had always wanted to move closer, but it was always Jaime who had the courage to do it. Brienne had been too much of a coward. Even asleep, she held herself away. But she always woke so much closer. Her hand would be on his hip, or perhaps tucked around his front. One morning she woke and she was brushing her thumb idly over his maimed arm as he held tight to her waist. She had moved away and been out of the tent before he woke. It had shaken her badly.

She longed for it, though. She had never before slept beside someone she loved. So close like that, it was so _much_. He was so much. To look on, to speak to, to stand beside. Everything about him was clear and bright and new. Like he had been reborn on that battlefield when she thrust her magic sword into his side and nearly killed him. He was no longer that defeated shadow she met at Riverrun. He was free.

_He is free, and he says that he loves you._

He hadn’t spoken the words since they returned to Winterfell, but she didn’t _need_ the words to see it when he looked at her. She understood what lingered in those silences. She understood, too, why he didn’t say them aloud. She had rejected them. She had disbelieved them. She still did. He _wanted_ to love her. He thought it was right for his new, reborn self to love her. The handsome knight falling for the hideous beast of a woman who had shown him what true honor was. It was something out of a tale, and Jaime told her before that he had always loved tales of honor as a boy. He was a beautiful warrior who had chosen to leave behind the poisonous allure of his warped love for his sister and had found something simpler, something more pure, with a woman who held his honor in such high esteem. That was all it was. It wasn’t nothing, but it also wasn’t enough.

Jaime longed to be a better man, and perhaps he thought that a better man would love a kinder woman than Cersei. A woman filled with foolish belief in the goodness of people who wanted the world to think they weren’t. She was Jaime’s biggest supporter, and his only true friend, by his own admission. Why shouldn’t he love her? He probably thought she was a good choice of someone to love, but he had said it himself, hadn’t he? Love wasn’t a choice. He couldn’t force himself to love her. He couldn’t talk himself into it. He would tire of her eventually. He would go back to his sister. He always had. Why should this be any different?

The way he had looked at her on that battlefield.

The way he had looked at her at Riverrun.

_He loves you. He loves you, and you don’t believe him._

She would have to be mad to believe him.

* * *

Sansa gestured Brienne in. She closed the door. Her mask crumbled into tiredness. She was rubbing at the small of her back and sighing. 

“I can’t believe I used to want to be _queen_ ,” she mused as she sat beside the fire and pulled some sewing into her lap. To Brienne, that seemed like _more_ unpleasant work, but she knew that Sansa always found peace in it. She often sewed garments before bed. It was necessary for the war effort, because they still didn’t have nearly enough, but Sansa _liked_ it, too. It brought her relief the way that it brought Brienne relief to spar with Podrick or work at drills in the yard with Jaime. Brienne sat in the chair beside Sansa’s, the way she often did at the end of the night like this. She unbuckled her sword and leaned it against the arm of her seat. Sansa looked at it, and Brienne knew that she was going to speak. She braced herself for it. Sansa’s words were often difficult to predict, but not this time. “Ser Jaime,” Sansa said. “Told me about your sword. How he gave it to you. How he found it fitting for my father’s sword to protect me.”

Brienne nodded. She didn’t want to say anything else, but Sansa was looking at her in anticipation, and so she managed to say, “yes, my lady.”

“I remember Ice. I remember how large it was. It always seemed like only my father could use it. Like it was magic in some way. Only for him. Now, you have saved me with it, and protected me with it since.”

“Yes. And I will continue to do so for as long as you’ll have me,” Brienne said. Sometimes, she knew, Sansa needed to be told that. She never admitted it aloud to Brienne, but she worried about people leaving.

“Surely you’ll want more for yourself than guarding me.”

“No, my lady. A noble service to a good lord or lady. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

Sansa shook her head. She was stitching something on a deep blue cloth, with silver thread. Brienne watched her for a while, wondering what it would turn into. Sansa had a way of seeing the shape of something long before it formed. It was foreign to Brienne, and she found it soothing to watch Sansa construct artwork out of nothing more than a few strands of thread. She thought she could make out clawed nails. A curling paw, perhaps. A wolf? Or the talons of a bird of prey? It didn’t matter. Brienne would watch her anyway. Sansa’s delicate fingers moved so surely over the fabric. It was fascinating.

“That’s not true,” Sansa finally said. “I know you too well to believe that, Brienne.”

Brienne flushed, and she looked away, into the fire.

“My lady, I know we haven’t had much time to talk since I’ve been back. But…” She realized that she had no idea how to go on. Sansa was looking at her with an almost imperceptible smile and with her eyebrows raised. Brienne was blushing. She knew that. She had always been so obvious.

“Not so much could have changed,” Sansa said resolutely. She looked back down at her work at last, though Brienne still felt as though her lady’s eyes were on her, seeing every moment Brienne had foolishly let herself hope. Every idle touch of Jaime in her sleep. Every ridiculous dream. Sansa continued, “we are still more alike than we are different. I’m sure of it.”

“Yes, my lady,” Brienne admitted. Sansa hummed in satisfaction and continued sewing.

“Forgive me for the assumption, but I thought you and Jaime would have spoken about this by now.”

Brienne noted, miserably, the use of his name. _Jaime_. Not Ser Jaime. Not Jaime Lannister. Not _Kingslayer._ On the road, Brienne had worried that Sansa wouldn’t accept Jaime’s presence in the castle because of the harm that Jaime had done to her family. Instead, the opposite had been true. They had so quickly become friends, and Brienne knew that Sansa would not understand Brienne’s fears. Especially not as Lady Sansa was still such a romantic.

Sansa was right about that, at least; they were so much alike, despite the way their lives and their very bodies had tried to shape them to be so different.

“He’s in love with his sister,” Brienne blurted. Sansa froze, stared at her. Brienne continued, a bit harshly, “surely you know that.”

“Of course I know….” Sansa started. She sighed. “We’ve spoken about it. At length, actually. I had questions that I needed answered before I could trust him, and he was willing to answer them for me. I know what he felt for his sister. I know what he _still_ feels. And I know what he feels for you.”

Brienne shook her head. Yes, she had been right to worry. Sansa saw what she wanted to see.

_And you, of course,_ she reminded herself dryly, _are a bastion of self-awareness._

“I know what he feels,” she said. Corrected herself with: “I know what he _says_ he feels. I even think it’s what he _believes_ he feels. But it’s not…it cannot be anything. Beside what he feels for his sister, it cannot mean anything.”

“Why not?” Sansa asked.

“Because he has loved her his whole life, and he barely _knows_ me!”

He knew her in some ways, of course. They had gone through much together in the weeks they traveled alone through the war-torn Riverlands. And after, when they were traveling with the Bloody Mummers, they’d had to rely on each other to survive. She had taken care of him in a way she’d never had to take care of anyone: with tenderness, with a gentleness she hadn’t known she was capable of. Her hatred of him had melted away slowly, replaced with feelings of camaraderie. Jaime had been his own kind of monster, but at least he hadn’t been one of _them._ A common enemy had made friends of them. Of course they cared for one another. And of course things had changed after Harrenhal. They had become _true_ friends, then. But he was still…and _she_ was still…

“That’s not very romantic of you,” Sansa chided with a sad smile. Brienne returned it with a smile of her own, equally morose.

“I suppose not,” she said. “I never said I believed that romance was possible for me.”

“No, you didn’t. That’s part of the problem, of course.”

“The problem?”

“Why you don’t trust him. It’s all right. I understand.”

“I do trust him, my lady,” Brienne said. That seemed very important, suddenly. “He can be trusted. I am sure of that.”

“Oh, I know. I have fully accepted your judgement of him. And Bran's. I still don’t understand Bran’s powers, but I believe that he knows Jaime’s heart better than any of us do. And after the letters we’ve exchanged, I find that I have a better understanding than I used to.” 

“Of course, my lady.”

Sansa rolled her eyes at the stale response, but she was smiling.

“Well your _lady_ thinks that _Ser Jaime_ will pine himself to death before you believe him. If you can’t trust him, you can’t trust him.”

“I _do_ trust him.” She’d just said that, hadn’t she?

“You trust him with almost everything, but you don’t trust him with your _heart_ ,” Sansa pointed out. She was rather smug about it. Rather arch, too, with an awareness that she was saying something ridiculous. Brienne shook her head. It was difficult not to laugh, but she felt too off-balance to laugh. She looked at the fire again, like she thought there was a hope of hiding her red-tinted cheeks.

“It’s just…easier to protect myself,” she said. “He will return to her eventually.”

Sansa sighed. Brienne knew exactly the look she could expect to see on her lady’s face. The wistful smile. There were times that Brienne felt like Sansa was the older one. She had a worldliness to her. Or perhaps it was only that bit of her that reminded Brienne of Catelyn; Catelyn had always seemed like the kind of person who understood everything. It made Brienne feel like a child in comparison.

* * *

When Brienne was finally dismissed, she made her way out into the practice yard. The sun had long since set, but people were still about, training. When Bran told them that the Night King would be upon them soon, everyone had been infused with a new vigor; there was never a time that the practice yard remained empty.

Her muscles still burned from her drills earlier, so she was content to stand by and watch Podrick out on the field. He looked tired too, but he had been training well since they had returned from Dragonstone. He had found some new purpose. She could not help but smile as she watched him.

He was fighting a lad much taller than him, but Podrick was holding his own. He was exchanging jokes with Arya, too, and Brienne was glad to see him more comfortable around the younger Stark girl than he was around the elder.

She spotted Jaime across the way, and he smiled at her. She smiled back. He took that as invitation to approach.

So soon after speaking of him in Sansa’s rooms, it was strange to see him now. Handsome and clean of the wear and dirt from the road. As always, he looked brightest against everyone else. Sparkling where they were weary. How did he do it?

“Lady Brienne,” he said in greeting. She nodded at him. He joined her in watching the men spar, and she could tell that he was building to something. She always existed in that odd space with Jaime. She wanted desperately for him to speak, and yet she dreaded it. What would he say? Would it be something cruel? It hadn’t been in so long, since before Highgarden. Still, it was the impulse she always assumed would win. She didn’t know how to understand when it was anything else. “I was wondering,” he finally said. But he didn’t finish, and she turned and looked at him. He looked worried. Oddly discomfited, for him.

“Yes?” she prompted. Her voice was shorter than she meant for it to be.

“I was hoping you would allow me to serve under you,” he said. Then, unnecessarily, “in the upcoming battle. I would like to fight beside you. I know I’m no longer the fighter I was…”

“Of course you may,” she said, cutting him off, unable to bear the expression on his face. He had looked so bereft in the moment of mentioning his diminished skills, looking down at the fur-lined covering over his stump that Sansa had given him. “I would be honored, Ser Jaime.”

He smiled at her, then, the dark cloud disappearing from his brow, and he tucked his stump back beneath his cloak. The twin to her sword glittered at his hip. She always felt stronger when Ice was whole again. Or perhaps it was just Jaime. His smile was so tempting to believe. She smiled back at him, wider than she was used to.

For a moment, just a moment, she allowed herself to believe him.

_He will return to her eventually_. Yes. She knew he would. But not yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Winter by Mree


	58. Robb IX

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Wall falls, and Winterfell prepares

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for not posting yesterday - I've been dealing with some eye-strain and was trying to avoid screens as much as possible yesterday. It hasn't done much good, so I went back to editing today anyway lmao. I should have at least one other chapter up today, if not two. We'll see how it goes!

Robb did not know much of the two men who arrived at Winterfell in the dead of night, but Jon vouched for both of them, and that meant that Robb trusted them.

In those first days after Robb returned to Winterfell, before he left for Dragonstone, he and Jon had spent a lot of time in conversation. Drunken conversation, sober conversation, conversation that fell somewhere in between. They had never talked so much as children, preferring instead to play. But they were both older, and far more tired, and there was so much that they had to catch up on. They told each other—and Sansa, when she could be persuaded to take a break—stories about what had happened while they were apart.

As their days seemed to grow shorter now, with the threat of the dead bearing down on them, Robb thought about those conversations often. His own stories had seemed pale and colorless next to Jon’s. Jon’s were full of deception and intrigue and fucking _giants_. Robb’s had men behaving treacherously, as men always had. Jon laughed the first time Robb expressed his jealousy, but there had been some measure of truth to Robb’s words. He had been so easily able to imagine Jon’s tales, and the colorful characters within.

Tormund Giantsbane and Edd Tollett were two of the more colorful men featured in those stories. Robb had met Tormund only in passing, not long after he’d returned to Winterfell, and now he found the man more scattered and nervous than the way Jon had described him. And Edd was less dour and not quite as funny as Robb had imagined him to be. Their arrival at Winterfell was a shock, a sudden disruption of a routine that they should have known better than to fall into. Bran was in the courtyard when the alarm began to sound, and when Robb arrived to investigate, followed by his siblings and a few of their household, Bran had locked eyes with him. He had nodded once. Robb’s stomach clenched, and sank, and he knew.

Edd and Tormund were brought into the hall for a mostly private audience with the Starks and Daenerys and her advisors. Tormund ate wolfishly after the hard ride south, so quick after his recent ride north, which he mentioned several times, plainly wanting some kind of apology from Jon for the running around. Edd picked at his thin stew with a grim expression while he told an impossible story about the shattering bellow of a horn and the way the Wall seemed to quiver and shake before finally falling, large swaths of it crumbling and sending ice scattering for miles.

Castle Black was a ruin. The other castles left along the Wall were probably ruins as well. Parts of the Wall still stood in jagged spikes of ice that rose into the air like broken teeth. The men who had been atop on guard had perished, along with many who had been buried in the falling ice and rock of the collapsing castle. Those who had made it out had been lucky. The Free Folk who had been camped near Castle Black, most of them had survived, though the shards of ice that flew from the collapse had claimed a few victims. They’d ridden hard for Castle Black, and most of the survivors, including Edd, had been pulled from the wreckage thanks to Tormund’s quick work taking charge.

“There may be some poor sods still buried in the ruin, but we couldn’t get them out,” Edd said. “ _He_ was coming.”

“The Night King,” Tormund said, looking at Jon significantly. He wiped his beard with the back of his hand; his hand was shaking. Tormund, Robb remembered from Jon’s stories, was not a man who feared much. He was not a man whose hands shook, and yet Robb could see him. It left him feeling cold, unfocused. Like he had felt in the early days, before Winterfell had given him back some of his soul.

“He was on the other side of the wall,” Edd said. “Watching us. Not doing anything. Not moving. Just _watching_ us.”

“Smiling,” Tormund added. “Don’t forget that the fucker was _smiling_.”

“He wasn’t smiling. You were pissing yourself and turned and ran too fast to get a good look at him through the fog,” Edd retorted, and Tormund glared at him.

“He was _smiling_ ,” Tormund insisted.

“He wasn’t.”

“ _Please_ ,” Jon said wearily. “Did you see the army?”

Silence, then. Tormund and Edd exchanged an uneasy look.

“Oh, aye,” Tormund finally said.

“We saw them,” Edd confirmed.

“And?” Robb found himself asking. Another long look was exchanged between the two men.

“It’s, uh,” Edd started.

“Quite a lot of them,” Tormund finished.

“What about the rest of the men at Castle Black?” Sam asked. “You said there were survivors. And the Free Folk?”

“They’re not far behind us,” Edd said. “We rode ahead, to warn you.”

“ _Not_ because we were scared,” Tormund insisted, pointing a dirty fork at Jon and Robb in turn. Sansa sighed somewhere behind them. Edd looked miserably down at his food.

“Speak for yourself,” he said. “I was fucking terrified.”

* * *

Daenerys sent out ravens to the lieutenants of her army who’d had yet to arrive. There weren’t many of them, but some companies had lingered in Riverrun to make certain there was no movement from Kings Landing, and some Dornish ships were on their way back north after having returned home for supplies. The final few dragonglass shipments were also expected, and there was nothing to be done about that but waiting and praying that they beat the army of the dead to Winterfell.

One of the ravens sent out turned out to be unnecessary, because Yara and Theon Greyjoy rode through the gates of Winterfell only hours after Daenerys sent a message off to the Ironborn.

Sansa had been persuaded to get some sleep after their meeting, but Robb was unsurprised when he stormed towards the courtyard and found that she was already making her way out of the hall. She was dressed hastily, and her hair trailed down her back instead of being pulled into braids the way she lately preferred to wear it. Brienne followed her, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

Robb’s anger had built quickly inside him when Daenerys told him who was approaching. She had informed him warningly, a reminder that he couldn’t start some kind of diplomatic incident, even though he _desperately_ wanted to. He had stalked to the courtyard anyway. He had no idea what he was going to do or what he was going to say when he saw Theon again, but it had to be _something_.

Sansa had told him everything. Of course she had. She had told him about how different Theon was, how he was scarcely recognizable anymore. She told Robb about how afraid Theon had been, and how he had refused to help her escape at first, because he had endured so much torture at the hands of Ramsay Bolton that it had broken his spirit.

Robb and Jon had both been seething by the end of that part of her tale, but Sansa’s voice had softened when she talked about when Theon _had_ helped her. The way he had protected her as they jumped from the walls of Winterfell and then fled into the snow. The fact that he would have gladly died just to see her safely to the Wall and Jon. It wouldn’t ever fix _everything_. Robb would never trust Theon again. But it had to mean _something_ , didn’t it? Sansa had forgiven _him_ for all his faults. Jon had forgiven Sansa for her casual cruelty when they were children. Arya and Sansa had patched things up. Everyone was forgiving everyone at the end of the world. Was Theon really so different?

Robb wasn’t sure. He didn’t have the answers for something so big. But it _felt_ different. 

Robb’s anger was not truly made more faded by the way Sansa ran to Theon and flung her arms around him. It wasn’t entirely done away with by the way Theon’s eyes closed with relief and the way tears tracked down his face as he held her. Robb had found that people often wanted things to _mean_ something. Sacrifices. Choices. They wanted things to matter to more than just themselves. But seeing Sansa and Theon in the courtyard made Robb’s own needs feel smaller. Not faded. Just…less important against everything else. He wanted revenge. He wanted to strike Theon down. He wanted to shout at him. _You were my brother_ , he would have said.

But what difference would it make, here, at the end of the world? Who would it help? _Him_? Nothing would reverse the betrayal. Nothing would bring back the people who had died when Theon took Winterfell. Nothing would bring them back so that Theon could make a different choice. That war was over. Those choices had been made.

Sansa’s arms were tight around Theon, and her gaze over his shoulder at where Robb stood on the stairs was fierce. A wolf protecting its cub. Robb huffed out a laugh, and Jon did the same, half a step behind him.

“She’s right,” Jon said. “This isn’t the time for old grudges.”

“ _Old grudges_ ,” Robb said. He turned and looked at Jon, raising his eyebrows. Jon flinched.

“Maybe not so old,” he agreed. 

Robb made it the rest of the way down the stairs, and he tried to remember the stories that Sansa told him. His own anger simmered within him, but Theon was lucky. Robb’s anger was a wispy, often strangled thing. It had in some ways gotten better since his marriage, in the sense that he hadn’t felt the need for _any_ anger in days. Every bit of energy he had had been used in preparing. But it was still…

He didn’t hate himself as much as he used to. He hadn’t forgiven himself, but he had taken steps towards it, and he had reached a point where he could at least understand himself better than he had.

The anger for Theon was so much like the anger he’d been living with for himself. Theon had been his brother. Theon had been one of the only people Robb trusted fully when he had been surrounded at all times by people who wanted too much. Robb had trusted his advice. Against his mother’s cautions, he had been so sure that Theon’s friendship was true. Theon had been his best friend.

Robb wouldn’t make the same mistake in trusting Theon again. He couldn’t possibly. But he understood. He understood, and he knew it was only Theon’s fault as much as it was also his own.

He had not yet entirely forgiven himself, either, but he was working on it. He could work on forgiving Theon, too. For Sansa. For Daenerys. For the alliance. For himself, and for Theon as well, he supposed. Carrying hate in your heart was a heavy burden, especially when it was for someone you once loved so much.

Theon regarded Robb’s approaching form like a kicked dog might regard a cruel master, and it made Robb bristle. He was not Ramsay Bolton, and if he attacked Theon, it would hardly be for no reason.

Theon’s sister Yara stood a distance away, her hand resting idly on her weapon at her hip. He could see the way she watched him, and he knew that she was going to let this continue until she thought Theon was in danger.

_Go ahead_ , her attitude seemed to say. _He deserves a little bit of what you want to give him. But he doesn’t deserve all of it._

Only Sansa stood ready to defend Theon from anything, and Robb’s black mood faded as he looked at his little sister. Her eyes flashed with a desire to protect, and her arms were still around Theon. She and Theon had suffered here, in their home, for so long. Wasn’t that penance enough for Theon? His life would never be the same. Robb knew what he had lost. He couldn’t take anything more than that, and he didn’t even want to, so why hold on to that anger?

“Theon,” he said simply. Theon nodded. He stepped forward, away from Sansa, though she held tight to his sleeve and refused to let him stand alone.

“Robb,” she said, warning. Robb shook his head. He stepped closer. He held out his hand, reaching for Theon’s own.

He had expected Theon to take it, and Theon did. From there, it was natural to pull Theon into a hug, the way they always had when they greeted or separated. He had hardly expected to do it, but it felt _right_. He was still angry. He was still confused. He would never understand why Theon had made the choices he did. But that was just it: he would never understand. He _could_ never understand.

Theon’s arms hung loosely only for a few moments, and then they gripped him tight. The wetness from Theon’s cheek pressed against Robb’s neck as Theon buried his face there and shook with sobs. He felt frailer than he used to, but not nearly so frail as Robb had feared. There was a strength in his grip. A _promise_ in the way he clung to Robb.

_I’m sorry_ , he was saying, his lips moving against Robb’s skin. _I’m sorry. I’m sorry._

Sansa released Theon’s arm with a breathed-out _thank you_ to the gods. Yara released her grip on her weapon. Even Jon hung back.

Theon clutched him tighter, and Robb found that he had not yet run out of tears.

* * *

Later, he found his wife in their chambers. She was still wearing the dress she had been wearing at the meeting with Edd and Tormund, and she was looking out the window, watching the snow as she often liked to do. She turned over her shoulder and smiled at him when he entered. Like all of her smiles today, it was strained and haunted by how short their time was growing, but he took heart from it anyway.

“I saw you with Theon,” she said.

“I was wondering where you were. I expected you to serve as his human shield.”

“Your sister had that well in hand, I think. And I wanted your reaction to be your _true_ reaction. You needed to choose what it would be without me there to influence you.” He nodded, grunted reluctant agreement. She laughed a little. Light and pealing. “I was glad at what you chose to do. I wasn’t sure.”

“Neither was I,” Robb admitted. He hung his outer shirt on the dressing screen and crossed the room to her at last. He was still shaken by his reunion with Theon, but he couldn’t help but smile at his wife. His _wife_ , waiting for him in their rooms. They’d spent so much of the evening apart, planning with their respective advisers. It was good to be with her again. “It isn’t the time to hate people for what they’ve done. It’s time to band together and honor what they’re choosing to do _now_.”

“How diplomatic of you,” Daenerys said, smiling at him. “Sansa would be proud.” She moved closer. Her eyes had the same tightness around them that Robb knew were around his, and he knew that she had not been idle up here. Daenerys often liked to pretend at being a young girl who knew nothing about war, but she spent hours thinking about it, looking at their maps and going over their troops and their supplies with anyone who would give her a few moments to discuss it. Robb understood her fear and her caution. He had felt the same way when he was waging his campaign against Tywin Lannister. Like one wrong move would mean the end of everything. Even a few hours to himself felt like a foolish luxury that he couldn’t afford, and he would return to his maps and his strategy as soon as possible.

Of course, they only felt that way because it was _true_. He _had_ been trapped in a sinking ship, and they _were_ now on the brink of a war that could lead so easily to their extinction. It was easy enough to _say_ that they should take some time to themselves. To enjoy what little they had left. But it was another thing entirely to actually take it.

“It was a diplomatic answer for a diplomatic situation,” he said, pulling back the blankets on the bed. Daenerys seemed to realize suddenly that she was still dressed. She didn’t bother to call for one of her handmaidens; she turned her back to him so that he could unlace the difficult portion of the back of her dress.

Of all the things that Robb liked about being married, this was one of the best. The quiet moments when he could nearly glimpse a peaceful future together. There were hardly enough of them. They were fighting a war. And not just _a_ war _. The_ war. The war for everything. And even if they weren’t…Daenerys was queen in a way Robb had never truly been king. She was always surrounded by her people. Her handmaidens and her advisors and a thousand others. Her people always had complaints and questions, and they always went to her and took her time, and Robb understood. His own people could be similarly needy.

But sometimes, every once in a while, they were left to themselves, and Robb was allowed to imagine what the rest of their lives might be like when the wars were done.

He helped her out of her dress, and she crawled into bed beside him. She kissed him soundly. It was so late, and both of them so tired, that they did nothing more than that, but she curled close to him, and he pulled the blankets over them, and they stared at each other, both of them smiling.

“I’m happy for you,” she said. “That you were able to find peace in it.”

“I’m happy too,” he said. “Though with the Wall falling…sometimes I wish I had never met you. That you were still safe on Dragonstone.”

“And then you would have no chance,” she said. “Instead of the slightest one.” Robb grimaced to acknowledge the truth of that, and she leaned in and kissed him again. “You were right to come and seduce me, Robb Stark. Otherwise, I would never have met you, and that would have been a tragedy. Along with the loss of, well, everyone.”

“Funny.”

“At least if we die, we _all_ die, and we die fighting. Is that better?”

“Grimmer. I think I preferred funny.”

“I can be funny,” Daenerys promised. “Tomorrow. Once I’m less exhausted. And things are just a little less bleak.”

* * *

Of course, things _weren’t_ less bleak on the morrow. Sansa and Missandei negotiated with the remaining non-combatants, and Daenerys did her best to soothe the ones whose egos were wounded by the fact that they were being sent away. Brynden convinced the Vale lords to agree to shelter most of them in the Vale, and so a whole host left fairly early in the day. Jon watched them go with obvious relief; he had been the one arguing most strongly for it, pointing out that anyone who was killed by the wights could rise again and become a liability to the fighters. Brynden watched them go with a frown on his craggy face, but Robb knew it was the right thing to do. He still didn’t envy his uncle in Riverrun nor his cousin in the Vale, having to find food and shelter enough for all of them.

Jon had tried to convince Sam Tarly to go, but Sam refused. He would stay and serve as maester, tend to the wounded who would be brought in. Gilly would be with him, and there was a whole fleet of volunteer nurses ready to assist them. Sam had found Robb, later in the morning. Ambushed him in a back hall, unaware of how startling he was. He was a nervous man, but he hadn’t been nervous, then.

“Davos told me what you did for my father,” he said. Robb couldn’t remember ever meeting Sam’s father, and he was loath to admit it, but luckily Sam continued, “He refused to kneel. He refused to call Daenerys his queen. She would have burned him. But you…”

“I’m sorry, Sam,” Robb said.

“No, don’t be sorry! I only wish…my brother, Dickon, he died in the fighting. I suppose my father was too proud to kneel, or maybe he just didn’t see the point. I don’t know. But it’ll do my mother some good, to know he died quickly, and not…well.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t do more.”

“It’s a war,” Sam said, trying to sound like he meant it. “I know that these things happen. Terrible things. And Dickon was a good lad. I’ll miss him a lot. My mother and sister…well. They’ll have a lot to deal with. But I wanted…Jon talked a lot about you, on the Wall, you know. How you were his brother in truth. Now, I don’t want you to feel sorry about this, but if Jon didn’t already have a sword of his own, I’d give it to him, but that’s only because he’s my best friend.”

He fumbled with the sword beneath his cloak as he handed it over. Thrust it out like a child offering a gift. Robb blinked, his hands hovering over it.

“I can’t take this,” he said. “This is Valyrian steel.”

“Yes. I stole it.”

“You _what_?”

“From my father. I stole it.” Sam’s glee was tempered only a little bit by something sadder. “I don’t know what I thought I was going to do with it. Give it to Little Sam, maybe? Or Dickon, eventually. I don’t know. But I want you to have it. You’re going out there with the rest. You’ll need it. Dragonglass is all well and good, but you can’t beat Valyrian steel, right?”

Robb took the sword at last, after a few more encouraging gestures from Sam. He held it in his hands. He remembered his father’s greatsword, Ice. Enormous and heavy and impressive. This blade was smaller, more easily wielded. The weight of it was perfect for him. And he felt _worthy_ of it. It was a strange sensation. He gripped it tight.

“Sam, I don’t know what to say,” he said, and Sam’s smile in return was lopsided.

“You two really are alike,” he said. “Jon wouldn’t know what to say either.”

* * *

After, Robb joined Sansa on the battlements. She was watching yet another wagonload of Wintertown villagers as it began to trundle along south. The wagons were all being packed in the rows of tents beyond the walls, and they snaked around, full to bursting with people and supplies. Many of the people on the carts were crying, saying their goodbyes to the ones who would remain. It was difficult to watch.

He turned and looked at Sansa. His sister stood tall, and she gripped the stone in front of her, as if she knew what he was going to ask. 

“Please, Sansa,” he said. “It isn’t too late.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Sansa said. She faced him, and she tipped her chin up so that their equal height was more obvious. “Anyone who _can_ and is willing is going to stay and care for the wounded. I will be one of them.”

The thought of his little sister covered in the blood of dying men, trapped in this castle, listening to their screams and their sobs… He was supposed to protect her. He was not supposed to let her linger when things like this were happening. He wanted to reach out for her. Pull her into his arms the way he used to when she was a little girl and afraid of some story of Old Nan’s, or some sounds in the night. But she turned and walked away before he could, shadowed by Brienne, who sent him a pained look in acknowledgement of his worry before she followed her lady.

Robb headed down into the courtyard, and he found Jon. Another wagon rattled past, and Robb felt a panic stir in his gut. He needed Sansa to be on one of them. By the end of the hour, maybe two, everyone would be away, and it would be too late for Sansa to join them.

“Jon,” he said. “Sansa won’t go.”

Jon didn’t look surprised. If there was any surprise, likely it was at the fact that Robb thought she would.

“No, she won’t,” he said.

“I want her to be safe,” Robb replied. Jon glared at him.

“And I don’t?”

“Please, Jon. Just talk to her. She might listen to you.”

Jon seemed taken aback by that, and his argument died on his lips. He hesitated, and at last he nodded.

“I’ll speak to her,” he said. He watched a few of the travelers walk by. He frowned deeper. “I’d like her to be safely away, too. But I can’t promise anything.”

“Just try,” Robb said. “Please.” Jon hesitated, but then he nodded.

“I will,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Above the Fog (Pt. 2) by The Best Pessimist


	59. Jon VII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon tries to convince Sansa to evacuate Winterfell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, a promise fulfilled! Would you look at that! POSSIBLY one more today

Jon knew there was no use in trying to convince Sansa to leave. He told Robb he’d try, because Robb looked so desperate, but it was hopeless. None of the rest of her family was fleeing. She wouldn’t either.

Jon couldn’t help but blame Sam, a bit. First Sam had announced his intention to stay and help care for the wounded while the fight raged, and that had given Sansa ideas of doing the same. Not to mention that Sam’s self-admitted cowardice was legendary, and Sansa was a _Stark_. She was less foolish about her pride than Jon and Robb and probably even Arya were, but she still had it. She wouldn’t leave if even _Sam_ had found the courage to remain.

Sam was also the one who told her that he could use her help with the wounded. Any available hands would be for stitching and sopping up blood and changing bandages. Jon still wasn’t sure how Sansa would handle that, but her face had lit up when Sam said the word _stitching_.

_I can do that_. He had practically been able to hear her thoughts. He knew that she wasn’t the same little girl who would have blanched and trembled and perhaps fainted at the sight of battle wounds, but he still felt uneasy when he tried to imagine her putting her talents to use with skin instead of silk.

_Girls see more blood than boys,_ he remembered, and he couldn’t help but smile. Ygritte had been clever about that sort of thing. She never would have questioned Sansa’s desire to stay. She’d have mocked Sansa’s pretty dresses and her stiff manners, but she would have called him an idiot for thinking his cousin belonged up in some fairy castle in the clouds, away from the fighting. _Girls can die just as quick as boys, too_ , she might have said. She would have laughed if she heard the tale of Sansa feeding Ramsay Bolton to his dogs. _Maybe not quite as easily, if they’re quick enough_ , she would have added.

Gilly was another woman who refused to flee in the face of danger. Little Sam had been given over to the care of one of the handmaidens who served Daenerys and would be leaving for the Vale; she’d just had a child of her own, and Daenerys vouched for her with enough passion that Gilly had been persuaded to part with her son until the battle was over, to keep him safe. She would be helping with the wounded, too; she had learned more than enough from the women at Craster’s Keep, and from the Citadel, and from Sam, and she would be an important asset. She and Sansa and Missandei had spent the better part of the previous day taking stock of their medical stores and sending ravens to White Harbor and Riverrun and The Vale for more. The supplies from Dorne and from Pyke, which would be delivered by Greyjoy ships and escorted by Martell forces up from White Harbor, would tide them over for a time, but none of the three women were the type to assume the best. The extra supplies wouldn’t reach Winterfell in time for the battle, but Sansa had been right to argue that they would need even _more_ in the aftermath.

“We have to plan like we’ll win,” she had said to Jon afterward. “Even if it’s sometimes difficult to imagine.”

Sam and Gilly had both begun to train their small army of future nurses in the kinds of wound care they would be dealing with. They had given lessons on the right blends to make salves and healing ointments. They had embarrassed Jaime Lannister by using his scars to show the correct way to fold the flap of skin over a battlefield amputation to close the wound effectively. They were twin terrors as they walked the castle, pulling every available non-combatant into their lessons. Fires went untended. Dough went unkneaded. Sam and Gilly didn’t care, and Sansa didn’t care either.

“What?” she asked the first lord who complained, in front of all the others in the great hall. “Is it too difficult to figure out how to build your own fire, my lord? Perhaps I could show you how it’s done when I have a free moment in all this preparation.”

Word spread quickly, and she had not been bothered again.

Sending Sansa away seemed impossible both because Jon knew she would not go and because he didn’t _want_ her to leave when she was such a boost to morale and she was so ever-present in all their planning sessions, but once Robb mentioned it…

When Jon fought in the battle against Bolton, he had known that his failure would mean Sansa’s death. She had told him so, in that tent. If he lost, she would not be going back to Ramsay Bolton alive. She could not have been more clear. It had been at the back of his mind during every desperate struggle on that awful day. She was all that was left of his family. She was the only thing left to fight for. His brothers had betrayed him and Ygritte was dead, but Sansa was still alive as long as he did not lose. She was all that mattered. And if he failed, it would all be for nothing. He’d told the red woman. Begged her. _Don’t bring me back._

There was so much more to fight for now. His whole family. Robb and Arya and Bran were all staying at Winterfell, to fight or to observe or to do whatever it was that Bran was planning on doing, but perhaps they could convince _Sansa_ to leave. Wouldn’t that be better? Wouldn’t he feel better, knowing she was somewhere safe? Up in a tower, high above the ground. Perhaps the Eyrie would be spared. Perhaps, against all odds…

_If we lose, it won’t matter where she is._

That part was true. The Night King would exterminate everyone, and Sansa would be alone again, without anyone to protect her. She would be afraid. Her castle in the clouds would only keep her safe for so long, and then she would be trapped. It would drag on. Night after night, knowing it was hopeless. Knowing that her whole family was dead, and that perhaps their corpses even then fought to reach her, to kill her, to turn her into one of them. Perhaps it would be him, in the end. Bursting into her chamber.

No. No, she would find a way to end it before that happened. He knew Sansa. He knew her, and he knew that she would _hate_ that, too. She would not want to be so far from them, if the end had to come. She would rather die quickly.

_Still_ , there was a stubborn part of him that wanted it. Her safety, even if it wasn’t guaranteed. If he had to die, at least he could die thinking there was a _chance_. He would die hoping, praying, that she would be safe. The armies gathered here would fight to keep the dead away from Winterfell, but it might not be enough. They could win the night and still the castle could be overrun. They could win and still lose her, and that would be intolerable. It would be best if she was away.

* * *

He found Sansa in her solar with Brienne, both of the Lannister brothers, and Theon Greyjoy

As always, Jon felt a discomfort around all three men. Worse when they were in the same place together. Enemies turned allies. Jon was no stranger to _that_ , but Tormund and the rest of the Wildings had been easier for him to trust. It was only his trust in Sansa _and_ Brienne that kept him from constantly showing his disapproval in their presence. They had all done much for Sansa, and he knew that she would not thank him for whatever rudeness his pride compelled him to.

Sansa handed something off to Theon, who said he would let his sister know and then moved past Jon to the door without looking at him. Sansa sifted through some more papers on the desk trying to remember for Tyrion the exact number of horses on their way from White Harbor. The last of the Martell-sent supplies that would be arriving before the battle, probably.

“The horses will be better put to use in helping the refugees,” Tyrion was arguing. “We have enough for the mounted units.”

“We don’t know how long this is going to last,” Jaime pointed out. He was leaning insolently against Sansa’s desk, his hip propped against it and his arms folded over his chest. He always looked like he belonged in whatever place he found himself, though—at least in Winterfell—that was almost never true. Standing too close to Sansa, he seemed lazily content, like a wild animal made tamed housecat in his advancing age. Brienne stood watch at the door. She was eying Jaime’s indolent posture more critically than anyone. “The mounted units will need to switch out their horses if it goes on very long, and horses die more easily than anything else in war. They’ll be needed.”

Tyrion nodded begrudgingly at that, and Sansa scribbled something on the parchment before passing him the missive.

She looked up as she handed Tyrion the parchment, and she spotted Jon. Jaime Lannister’s gaze followed hers, and he stood up, away from the desk. He made everything seem like a deliberate choice to look as graceful and feline as possible. Even with his missing sword hand, he still seemed to Jon to be the most dangerous man in the world.

“We should attend to this,” he said, sounding knowing and smug and _awful_. “And allow Lady Sansa some time to herself. Come, brother.”

He kissed Sansa on the hand in farewell, and he executed a mock bow to Jon on his way by. He said something in a low voice to Brienne that Jon couldn’t hear, but the tips of Brienne’s ears were turning red before Jon looked away from her and back to Sansa. Sansa was waiting, standing straight, looking at him knowingly.

“Brienne, you’re dismissed,” she said, and Brienne nodded in acknowledgement and followed the Lannister brothers out the door.

“I don’t know why you put up with them,” he said when the door was closed. “They could be sleeping outside the walls of Winterfell, in their tents.”

“Quite a way to treat our allies.”

“Plenty of our allies are doing it.”

“Not the highborn ones,” Sansa drawled, seating herself again at her desk. “You know the lords would throw a fit.”

“No, they wouldn’t. They respect you, and they hate the Lannisters. They would support it.”

“I know you don’t like to hear this, but Jaime Lannister is my friend, and my sworn sword besides. And Tyrion was not my worst husband. I don’t mind him so much.”

“Sansa…” Jon sighed, and Sansa sighed with him.

“I wish you wouldn’t be so protective sometimes,” she muttered. “I know what I’m doing, Jon.”

“Then you’ll really hate what I’m here to say,” he said, and she cracked a smile. There was a weariness behind her eyes, but she was amused anyway.

“I know what you’re here to say,” she said. “Robb tried it first. Arya. Jaime. Theon. Uncle Brynden. Even Brienne. I expect Daenerys might try next, although she might surprise me and take my part. I’ll tell you what I told all of them: I’m not going anywhere.”

“If the dead overtake us…”

“If the dead win, all of us are lost. It won’t matter where we are. It won’t matter how far I get. You’re the one who told me that, and you were right to say it. I would rather face my death _here_ , in Winterfell. I have spent so long running and hiding. I am home, now. I don’t mean to leave again. Not if I can help it.”

“You could go anywhere. We have the gold for it. You could go across the sea. Through the dragon queen, we have allies in Dorne. Meereen.”

“Yes, the Meereenese seem likely to accept me among them, considering how well they were doing when Daenerys left them,” Sansa said. She looked away from him, back to her letters, dismissing him. She was tense. Afraid, but strong, and refusing to bend. He loved her.

“Anywhere,” he begged. She shook her head. “I cannot ride into battle, knowing you’re here and unsafe. Knowing that if I fall…”

“Then don’t fall,” she snapped, glaring at him. She left the desk and walked around it. She was angry now. The weariness was gone.

“You know it isn’t that simple,” Jon said.

“It has to be,” she said. “Because you cannot die.”

She was standing closer to him now, and she had stripped away the layers of herself until he thought he could see her laid bare before him. The shadows in her eyes and the sadness in them, too. The tight set of her mouth. The anxiety in her shoulders. She was watching him for something. Reading him for something. His own walls would not fall so easily, because he had more to hide than she did.

“Sansa,” he said.

“You promised me,” she said. “That you wouldn’t leave me.”

He smiled helplessly.

“ _Sansa_ ,” he repeated.

“Don’t,” she said. She closed her eyes briefly, hanging her head. “I know that was a childish thing to say.”

“No,” he said, though of course it was. Her shoulders were slumped. She was so tired. He was tired too, and he wondered how much of it showed on him.

“Don’t ask me to leave,” she said. “I can’t leave. Knowing all my people are here. I left Winterfell once, and it was the worst thing that ever happened to me. I can’t do it again.”

“If you stay here, and the castle is overrun…”

“Then I’ll know you’re already dead,” she reminded him. “Because I know you wouldn’t let them get past you.” She held his gaze long enough for him to drop his eyes and nod. “I wouldn’t ask you not to fight, Jon. Don’t ask me to leave.”

He nodded again, though his chest grew tight with emotion, and though he longed to argue. _Can’t you see?_ It was a shock to him that she couldn’t. She was so adept at reading everyone else. But this, him, the way he looked at her...she was blind. Maybe it was good, but he wanted her to know _something_. She deserved to know as much as he could afford to let her see.

“I won’t,” he said softly. “I’m sorry. I just…I want you to be safe. I want to _know_ you’re safe. That’s what matters to me. It’s what I’ll be fighting for. To see you safe again.”

His voice was too rough with emotion, and it was _too much_. He knew that immediately. Her mouth dropped open. Just slightly, her eyes widening as she took him in. He felt a nervousness steal over him. Why had he said that?

She crossed the scant space that remained between them, and she pulled him into her arms. They were tight around him, and her face buried itself instantly in his hair, the way it always did when she hugged him. It was strong. Not afraid of him at all.

“Please,” she whispered to him. Her voice was rough, too. “Please, just stay alive, Jon.”

He hugged her back, finally, the shock wearing off. She was warm in his arms. Warm and real and here. Alive. He tried to hold on to this feeling as much as he could. He would need it when the fighting began.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Beige by Yoke Lore


	60. Arya VI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya and Jon meet up in the crypts to discuss his mother

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alright I'm officially fully on fire today. everybody leave me alone because I am crushing it for one day only.

She almost didn’t notice him at first. He arrived with a whole group of men from Kings Landing, petitioning to join the army. They’d been trickling in for days, but there was more of a push, now. Poorly dressed men and a few women, with ramshackle weapons and armor. Sansa greeted them all like they were courtly knights, but of course they weren’t. They were from Flea Bottom. They were from villages along the way. Arya could not stop smiling at them as they walked by. _This_ was the kind of thing that she always used to like in stories. Regular people doing things that made them special. She didn’t need any gods-granted powers. She didn’t need special prophecies or silly fated romance. Just a man in Flea Bottom wanting to help, and marching weeks and weeks to make it happen.

But _him_. It was the stupid helm that did it. It wasn’t the same as his old one, but it had antlers on it just like the last. It was polished and shiny and black, and he couldn’t have screamed his presence more obviously if he had stood atop the walls and announced himself by fucking name.

She walked beside him for a bit, wondering if he’d notice. He didn’t, of course. He’d always been like that, and it was worse now that she was quieter and sneakier. Finally, she got fed up.

“What’re _you_ doing here?” she asked. He startled, then smiled down at her, scrambling to take off the stupid helmet. And, oh, right. She’d forgotten how she liked Gendry’s smile. She suddenly felt very embarrassed. She should have avoided him, not sought him out like this.

“I came to fight,” he said. She rolled her eyes.

“ _Obviously_ , idiot. How’d you even know there was fighting to do?” 

“The ravens.”

“ _What_ ravens? Who sent them?”

“Dunno. Ravens started arriving in Kings Landing weeks ago with messages about the army of the dead marching to Winterfell. A bunch of us snuck out through the sewers, since that’s the only way in or out now. We were passing word through the inns and the brothels, mostly. The Goldcloaks would find the routes and block them up, but then we’d just make new ones. We couldn’t stay there, anyway. Whole city’s starving, and the ravens said that the dragon queen would feed us if we joined her, so we did. She’s mad, they say. Queen Cersei. I don’t know if she is, but it wasn’t safe there for me even before. I wanted to be here. Finally see milady’s castle. I didn’t realize you’d be here to greet me.”

He did a terrible bow, and she punched him in the arm for it. He laughed at her. It was just like it used to be, and she felt herself relaxing. So he was a bit older. So was she. He was handsome. Lots of people were handsome, and she didn’t act funny around any of them, so this should be the same. He wasn’t even _that_ handsome. Like he was fine to look at, and he made her laugh, but sodding Jaime Lannister was the prettiest man she’d ever seen, and she never acted anything but normal around _him_. And Daenerys was beautiful, and her translator Missandei was beautiful, and her husband or whatever, Grey Worm, he was one of the best fighters Arya’d ever seen, and _he_ had a nice smile, too. So it was _fine_ that Gendry was here, and it was _fine_ that his smile made her smile back reflexively in a way no one else’s smile did. It didn’t mean she had to act like a silly idiot about it.

Actually, even just seeing him helped. She was Arya Stark, but she had been Arry, once. And Arry had made friends with a boy with an antlered helm, and now he was here to fight beside her, just like he had done before, when the Lannister men came for them.

“Suppose they’ll have you working on making swords with all the dragonglass,” she said. She looked him up and down. “We need all the smiths we can get. And _don’t_ say anything about your lady commanding you, or I’ll have to show you what I’ve been learning since you last saw me.”

She flipped her dagger about a bit, showing off with Little Fire, but that only made him laugh at her some more. _I missed him_ , she realized. She glowered at him. She felt like Arya again. More and more, she remembered what it was to be herself.

* * *

She saw Gendry to the smiths, and it didn’t take long for them to start bickering like they always had. Both laughing by the end of it because they were both more grown up now and didn’t take everything quite so seriously. Arya promised to find him later, and he promised to be waiting. She lurked about in the shadows and watched him meet with the head blacksmith, just to make sure everything went all right. He wouldn’t appreciate her throwing her weight around as a lady, but still. What was the use of a high birth if you couldn’t use it to help your friends?

After, she stood on the walls for a bit and watched the road. It was a steady trickle from the south. Lots of people were peeling off at the camps around Winterfell, joining the celebrations. She wondered if any of them realized how little time was left. They’d traveled weeks to be here, and there would be almost no time for them to rest. Most of them would probably die in the battle. They weren’t trained soldiers. They weren’t trained _anything_ , most of them. They saw a bad thing happening and they wanted to do something. They were helpless in Kings Landing and they wanted to go somewhere where they might make a difference. It was a good thing, but it made Arya feel sad.

Most of them, she knew, wouldn’t make a difference at all. Most of them would swing their borrowed swords a few times before being struck down. Maybe they’d take a wight or two down with them. Maybe there would be enough time for some of the soldiers to teach some of them. She saw some of the men in the Lannister camp organizing the refugees into groups. A red-haired lieutenant was gesturing between them, talking to the men around them, and she knew that he wouldn’t be the only one. Still, it wouldn’t be enough. A lot of these men had been soldiers their whole lives. They’d learned how to fight with a sword when they were still children. _They_ would probably all die, too.

They’d die, and if anyone survived at the end, they’d never remember all of their names. They’d never remember where they came from or who they fought for before they fought for everyone. Their children would never find out where their bodies lay. Their wives and mothers and fathers too old to fight would never know, either. They would just die. They would be burned. They would not have added anything to the fight but another body.

That was just the way of war. That was just the way things happened. Arya could not change it or fix it alone. Maybe no one could.

She knew that she should have been resting before the battle that was with every hour coming closer, but she felt too full of energy to return to her bed to try and sleep. She’d fought before, but she’d never been involved in a real battle. Not when she was old enough and trained enough to know how to actually fight. Not like the kind of fighting that _this_ fighting was going to be. She wasn’t scared, exactly. She was _worried,_ about reasonable things. But there was a gnawing in her stomach as she looked out at all those people. All those people dead and turned wight. It was what Jon said happened when he fought the dead before. The Night King raised them up again and turned them into his own army.

Untrained men. Untrained and doomed to die. 

Anyone who was killed in the battle could rise again and be turned into an enemy. Why couldn’t _that_ be one of Bran’s powers? Why couldn’t that be one of _her_ powers? Trading faces was a useful skill to have, and she’d helped Sansa and the others with her disguises, even recently, dressing as servants and slipping unnoticed into places where Arya Underfoot wouldn’t have been welcomed, making sure that the scheming of people like Varys and Tyrion wasn’t going against her family. But trading faces would be useless against dead things.

She still thought she’d have been better off going to kill Cersei. She and the Hound could have been there by now. She could have snuck into the sewer the same way Gendry and all these people snuck out. Cersei wouldn’t have been expecting it. It would have been the perfect time.

She watched Jaime Lannister closely when she could. Sansa seemed to like him, and so did Brienne. Even Robb occasionally smiled at some of his jokes. _Jon_ didn’t seem to like him, but he still looked at him kind of starry-eyed, the way he did the first time Lannister was in Winterfell. Like he looked up to him, still, even though his hand was gone and surely he wasn’t half as good a fighter as he used to be.

He didn’t seem very _scary_ anymore, not like she remembered, and not like how Cersei was terrifying in that way where she could be so sweet and fake and want to kill you at the same time. Jaime Lannister was smiley and sarcastic and rude to people he didn’t know, but he was all kind softness to Sansa and Brienne, and Arya knew she couldn’t kill him. Not without hurting them. Maybe that was what Bran meant when he said that they needed him.

It would be easiest to kill Cersei with Jaime’s face, but maybe Littlefinger’s would do as well. Or maybe she didn’t _need_ a different face. She could be one of the queen’s handmaidens. She could be a guard. Cersei couldn’t have guards with her _all_ the time, and she was probably like most highborn ladies: didn’t even pay attention to the girls that waited on her.

But Bran had said to wait. Arya didn’t trust him as much as she trusted Jon or Robb or even Sansa at this point, but she _did_ trust him, and that meant that she would listen to him. Even though he was weird and she was every day losing hope that he _was_ Bran.

When she turned to look down into the courtyard again, she saw Jon heading into the crypts. He had his cloak pulled tight around him, but she could see his tension even so. It seemed there was hardly a moment when Jon _wasn’t_ tense, lately, but she didn’t like that he was headed into the crypts in such a mood. She left her place to join him.

* * *

She wasn’t surprised to find that Jon was standing in front of his mother’s statue. Ned’s stone likeness stood nearby, his statue looking almost nothing like the father Arya remembered. People used to tell her that she looked like Lyanna, so it was probably true that Lyanna looked nothing like her statue, too. That bothered Arya if she thought about it too long. The fact that their faces would be lost to time. The statues were there, but those weren’t their faces at all. What would _her_ statue look like?

She made sure to make some noise as she walked so she wouldn’t startle Jon. He still looked surprised to see her, and his smile was strained like the rest of him.

“Did you come down here for…your father?” he asked. He still hesitated over saying _father_ , though all of them had insisted that he should still call Ned _father_ if he wanted.

“I saw you coming in,” she answered. Jon nodded and turned to look at his mother’s face again. Arya could close her eyes and see her own mother’s face. All its lines and colors. Her smile and her hair. Everything moving and clashing and wonderful. Her sharp, prodding voice, yelling _Arya!_ What would it be like to only have this statue as a mother? No memories. No smiles. No songs.

“I’m sorry,” she told him. “That you never got to meet her.”

Jon nodded. He looked away from Lyanna’s face.

“Me too,” he said.

Arya wished that he could have known his mother. She wished that Lyanna had survived. Maybe they still would have grown up in Winterfell together, except _her_ mother wouldn’t have been worried about him. She would have loved him. Sansa would have, too. It would have been different. Nicer for Jon, and he would have had a mother, and Arya would have had an aunt.

“Father used to tell stories about her,” Arya mused. “Uncle Benjen, too. They used to say she was wild. She loved the same things we did as children. Father always said I reminded him of her.”

“I remember,” Jon said, grinning at her. “He said we were the only ones who looked like her. I suppose now I know why.”

“I think, from everything father used to say about her, she would have been proud of you.”

Jon looked surprised at that, and he quickly turned his eyes away.

“Maybe,” he said, doubtful. Probably remembering every bad thing he’d ever done. Jon could be dramatic like that, sometimes. He looked towards Ned, and he and Arya walked together to stand in front of his statue.

“She would have been,” Arya said. “Jon…”

“I’ve had to make some choices. Do some things I wasn’t proud of. I don’t know if she would have liked all of them.”

“She would have.” Firmer now. “You always made your decisions for the right reasons, whatever they were.”

“And how would you know that?” Jon asked, trying for lighthearted. It was haunted instead.

“Because I know you,” Arya answered, and he huffed a laugh. She pretended not to notice that tears shone in his eyes. Just a bit. He shook his head and looked up at Ned.

_Father_ , Arya thought, and she remembered how lost and broken he had seemed, in those last moments. Before the sword came down. When he had looked at her, saw her out in the crowd. What was he thinking about? What was he seeing? _Father_. She wasn’t a little girl anymore, but she felt it. Even though this statue didn’t look anything like him. _Father. Father. I need you. I want you back._

“He lied to me for years,” Jon said. “He lied to all of us.”

“For you. To protect you. To keep you safe.”

“I don’t know if I could ever make it up to him. I don’t know if anything I do could ever be enough.”

“You took back Winterfell. You protected Sansa when he couldn’t. You did everything right.”

“No,” Jon said. “I didn’t.”

Arya looked up into her father’s stone eyes. She remembered them meeting hers over the heads of all those people. She remembered hearing the crowd, after, after she had been forced to stop watching.

“You did,” she argued. “We’ve all done things we would rather not have done.” The stableboy in Kings Landing. The sword sliding easily into his belly. “But we can’t help it sometimes.”

“We can, though,” Jon said. “We can choose what we do.”

Jon watching Sansa as she walked down the halls. Sansa watching Jon. The two of them endlessly orbiting. Looking and then looking away just as quickly. Both of them so shaken, so disgusted with themselves that they couldn’t see that the other felt the same terror.

Arya had stood with Sansa on the battlements and watched the way Jaime Lannister’s face went all open and yearning when he spoke to Brienne down below. It was so obvious. It was _so_ plain. Sansa had made a joke about it, and Arya had laughed, but…

How could they not see? How could they not understand? They were both so convinced that they were broken. So sure that their experiences had ruined them.

_She_ was the broken one. She was the one who had come back less than whole. The rest of them… Jon had come back to life and felt like there was a blackness inside of him. Robb lost everything after a choice he made for love, and he felt like love had been hollowed out of him, and he felt like it was fitting punishment for what he had done. Sansa had been shown over and over again that love and lust were dangerous, that she was only ever going to be treasured as a possession and her claim, and she felt like she wasn’t capable of feeling real love anymore.

But they were all wrong. None of them had bent so badly out of shape that they’d been broken by it. _Arya_ had been no one. She learned things that no Stark should know how to do. She had killed. She would kill again. She had smiled when she killed the Freys. And even now, even at home, even with her family, she didn’t regret it. She would do it again. She would kill Cersei Lannister if they let her. She would fight through anyone who would try to stop her.

How could they not see it?

Jon was looking down at her. He smiled softly. He put his arm around her.

Gendry hadn’t seen it either. He had greeted her in the courtyard like she was still the same little girl he remembered. And Jon. And Robb. And Sansa. Only Bran seemed to know that there was anything different about her. Maybe that was why she was still acting like the annoying sister she used to be. Teasing him and prodding him and asking him constant questions even though he refused to give the answers.

Why didn’t they see?

Ned’s eyes had locked on hers, and he had seen her. Had he known what she was going to have to do to survive? Was that why he had looked so horrified?

No. He looked so horrified because he was going to die. He was going to die, and he was going to leave his daughters alone in the world, without anyone to protect them. He looked horrified because they were killing him for terrible reasons, and because Sansa was screaming for him, trapped, and because Arya was lost in the crowd.

If he knew what she had done…

_Good_ , he would say. _You did what you had to_. He would smile sadly, just like Jon had. He would understand that she had done things she wasn’t proud of. But she would still be Arya. She would still be his daughter.

She did not cry. She didn’t do that anymore. But she wiped at her eyes and buried her face in Jon’s cloak, and she hugged him tight. No one else would see them. There was no one else here. And Jon was crying too.

* * *

When they were leaving, carrying the nearly-burned-out candle that Jon had taken down with him, they paused again in front of Lyanna. She still looked too pretty. But she looked wise, too. Her perfect stone face seeing and understanding everybody. Had Lyanna been anything like that? Or had Ned been right when he said that she was like Arya? Wild, unpredictable, unfettered? She had fallen in love, according to what Bran said about Jon’s birth. She had fallen for stupid Rhaegar Targaryen and ran away with him. That was the opposite of what Arya would have done. If some man married to a princess came to her and told her that he loved her, she would remind him about the princess and run away.

“Look,” she said. She looked at Lyanna when she said it, though she half-turned towards Jon so he would know that the words were for him. “I think all of this love shite is…well. But you’re making yourself miserable.”

“Arya…” Jon sighed.

“And so is she. I know you don’t want to see it. Or maybe you do, and you think it’s too good to be true or something, but it isn’t. She moons after you the same way you’ve been mooning after her, and the pair of you are wasting all this time when you could just _tell_ each other. I’m not going to pretend to understand it. It’s not that. But you love each other. You’re not broken. Maybe it started out as something else. Maybe it would have been different if you weren’t our cousin. But…the dead are coming, Jon. We might not have much more time left. And if there’s anything I know about your mother…she would have made sure that the person she loved knew she loved them.”

She looked at Jon at last, and she saw that he was staring back at her. His expression was stormy, doubtful, afraid. Still, he nodded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the songs for this chapter are Orphan by Vaults and Northern Lights by Michele Mclaughlin


	61. Daenerys VII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dany scouts ahead on Drogon to see how far away the army of the dead is

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gonna try to post all of the remaining pre-battle chapters today so that tomorrow can be dedicated to the Long Night! So that should be 3 chapters today. One of them is already done so I'm posting it immediately after this, and the other will hopefully follow in a few hours!

Drogon flew higher, climbing above the clouds, and she could feel his joy at finally being allowed to push himself. All three of her children had been remarkably well behaved since they had arrived in Winterfell. There had been no complaints of murdered children, or even murdered goats. Granted, there didn’t seem to be any more goats to murder. The dragons had contented themselves with hunting, though Daenerys had no idea where they were doing it or what they were eating to sustain themselves. They flew away and then returned, sated. Robb had joked that perhaps they were eating wights, but Dany doubted it. That would be too convenient. Likely, it was the thinning ranks of deer further north. She knew there were bigger creatures even further, beyond the Wall, but she doubted that her dragons would risk ranging so far. Ever since Meereen, they never liked to be too far from her. 

She was almost _glad_ that the army of the dead was said to be nearly upon them. There had already been grumbling from the different armies—northmen and Lannisters, she’d assumed at first, until she heard from Varys that her own people were beginning to worry as well—about her dragons taking the food that was meant to feed their soldiers and scaring away the game in the woods. Sansa Stark every day grew more worried about the food stores. Her face grew haunted, rigid, with dark, exhausted circles beneath her eyes. Dany’s own people rarely managed to catch anything when she sent them out to hunt, and what little they found was lean and not worth very much. They had grain enough, Sansa was confident, and there was plenty of salted fish still coming from White Harbor and the Greyjoys, but it would all depend on how long it took to defeat the dead.

“The food was meant to last us the entire winter,” Sansa had said, her voice low and weary. “With all these mouths to feed…I don’t know if it’ll last the war.”

On Drogon’s back, Daenerys could put those worries to rest, at least for a little while. He seemed glad that she was with him, and glad to be flying. He spun downwards, tucking in his wings and twirling as he dove, and then shooting up, unfurling them brilliantly. He opened his mouth to roar. He was showing off, she realized. She laughed at him, and she stroked his back to calm him. She hadn’t had much time for her children in the past few moons. Everything had been plans and meetings and endless conversations about what they were supposed to be doing next. She understood it. She welcomed it. It was to be perhaps the biggest war that Westeros had ever seen, and she had thrown herself into it completely. She could not hope to be a good ruler if she did not rule them now, when they needed her most. But she had missed this. The simplicity of this: the wind in her hair, the feeling of her dragon beneath her, and the power of knowing that she could go _anywhere_.

Of course, the wind was freezing and uncommonly strong, and it slapped against her face and left her chilled and clutching at Drogon too tightly, afraid that she would fall off. And she couldn’t go anywhere without abandoning everything and everyone she loved. So perhaps it was only an illusion of freedom.

She had believed already. She had marched her entire army north. She had temporarily abandoned her own quest based on the word of men she hardly knew and a boy who claimed to be some creature engaged in an ancient war for everything. But it was only recently, as she talked to her nephew, that she truly understood the futility of running. Jon Snow was a taciturn man who looked nothing like she or Viserys or, according to those who had known him, Rhaegar. She liked to look at him and try to see something of a family resemblance, but he was so _northern._ More northern than Robb, even, with Robb’s sharp smiles and his occasional jokes and the auburn of his hair, all said to come from his Tully side. Robb had been grim and maudlin at the start of their friendship, but she had seen the softness that lay behind it. More and more, it came out. Jon was more difficult to read. His face was always set in a mask of neutrality, though it was difficult to tell if his, like Sansa’s, was an intentional mask or simply a natural expression.

But he had a persuasive way about him, all the same. He spoke plainly, telling her what she could expect to see. He told her of the powers he had seen the Night King display. He warned her of the creature’s strength and intelligence. He hadn’t had much to tell her, and he had been self-deprecating about the things he _did_ know, reminding her that he had had limited experience himself. But it had been enough.

There was nowhere she could run to escape the Night King, but it was a choice to stay as much as it was resignation to the inevitable. She had been moved by the pleas of the Starks and their people, and she had been convinced by their explanations. She had been made dedicated by the family that they offered her. _This_ , surely, was where she was supposed to be. There had been threats against her life before. There had been threats against her children. She had faced them all down. This was a threat to _everyone_ , and she would not fail to face this, as well. She could not expect to be queen if she could not rise to these occasions.

Tyrion had suggested writing Cersei to ask her to join them. He wasn’t naïve, exactly. She’d seen that he had a real cruelty at his core that he could wield when he had to. But like the rest of them, there was still a young boy at his heart who loved the stories, and in the stories there were always otherwise-evil rulers who bent their hands to help at the last moment, because they knew that there were some things that were too important to shy from.

And there was a little brother, too, who would never stop yearning for his sister’s love, no matter how long it had been and how little of it he had ever felt. Daenerys could understand that perhaps better than she wished.

Daenerys had allowed him to write. She saw no harm in it, mostly because she knew that Cersei would not reply. She had lost several men already as messengers, and she heard from Varys that they hung from the walls above the Red Keep, ghastly decorations turning skeleton in the sun, with the crows feeding from them. She saw their skulls when she closed her eyes. She added their names to her tally of her failures. Sometimes, when she dreamed, she wept and apologized, but they had no ears, and they could not hear her.

She would not make the same mistakes again. She allowed Tyrion to send a raven through Jon Snow’s friend, Sam Tarly, who had taken up as a sort of maester, but there would be no more messengers. No more offers of mercy. If Cersei Lannister wanted to send some men, she could send them. It would not stop Daenerys from taking her throne, but perhaps it would offer Cersei’s brothers some small comfort.

But the raven had gone out, and there had been no reply. Tyrion had not mentioned it, but he _wouldn’t_ , of course; he had been wrong, and her Hand liked to ignore those instances when he was wrong.

She nudged Drogon to climb higher, to fly faster. The dead were marching. They would be upon Winterfell soon. Bran had said so, and there was a woman who had arrived at the Unsullied camp who said that she saw their approach in the flames. She had said many vague, mysterious things and refused to be evacuated, but refused to stay inside the castle, as well.

“I am not welcome there,” she said. “But I must be with you, if you are to succeed. Tell no one of my presence.”

Daenerys had had enough of witches and sorcery, so she only nodded and thanked her, and thanked Grey Worm for bringing the woman to her attention. If nothing else, she could take the woman’s warning to heart: the time for planning and waiting and grasping at small pleasures was over. Now it was time for war.

Still, small pleasures seemed more important than ever in these times. Every kiss she bestowed upon her husband. Every moment she saw one of her people smile. The morning she stood above the courtyard and watched Arya and Brienne teaching Sansa how to wield the dragonglass knife that Arya had had made for her, their laughter a balm at the end of the world. The way Missandei had hugged her when Daenerys allowed her to stay at Winterfell, though her handmaidens had all been sent away for their safety. Small pleasures were all that was left, because everything else had been mired in preparation.

There was so much to do. _Too_ much. Every night she returned to her bed exhausted. Robb would usually join her, though some nights either one of them didn’t crawl into bed until first light, when the other would be rising. When they did get a chance, they clung to each other in sleep. She often woke with her hand wrapped around his wrist, tethering him to her in her slumber in a way she felt a childish desire to do when she was awake.

Already, she was forgetting what it was like to not be married. She had stood for years on her own. She had stood and fought and made decisions about the future of Westeros without anyone beside her who could truly understand. There had been Drogo when she was a girl, and Daario when she was a woman. They had been so different from each other, and _she_ had been so different when she was with each of them. Drogo had protected her, and Daario had enabled her. Robb supported her, and she supported him. It felt fitting for him to be the third man she loved. As she had grown, so had her heart. They would fight the dead, and she was terrified, but she felt more on solid ground than she ever had, and it was _good_ to have someone beside her who would not try to overpower her or crush her or lead her or influence her. Robb was simply _Robb_. He was her husband, he was a king to her queen. It did not feel like one was leading the other. It felt like they walked together, side by side, hand in hand. She liked the woman she was now, with Robb beside her. They balanced each other. She felt she could open up her whole heart in a way she never thought she would again after Drogo died.

The clouds grew thicker in the distance, and Daenerys nudged Drogon in that direction. The look of them was unnatural, too gray and dark and large. She had become used to the way the clouds looked before snow, and these were different.

She had never been very good at judging distance from the back of her dragon, but those clouds…it was less than a full day, she thought, if the army of the dead marched at the pace of men. She had been so eager for it to start, for the war to be upon them so that they could fight and she could turn her gaze back south, but she found that her lips quivered as she flew closer. How could she have thought that she was ready? None of them were ready, and they wouldn’t be.

This was about more than her crown. It was about more than her people. She had wanted both of those things for so long. She had wanted power, and she had wanted to fulfill her legacy, and now she just wanted to survive and see tomorrow. She had a husband. She had a family now. She had people to protect, and she had people that she wanted to see smiling and thriving and _alive_ when the sun came up again. It was easy enough to care for her people in a general sense. So many of them were vulnerable, and they needed her. It was easy enough to care for them even when she didn’t know all of their names. But she _knew_ so many of them now. They had all been working so closely together, and she had made friends. She had laughed with them, danced with them, broken bread with them. They were her _friends_ now, as much as they were also her people, and she wanted them to be _okay._

Any of them could die in the long night to come. Sam Tarly had been poring over books, interpreting old prophecies and trying to figure out how to defeat the Night King. Daenerys had left him to it; she had never done very well with prophecies.

Besides, if her dragons had not been meant to defeat the Night King, then why had they come back into the world? They had been stone when she found them, and now they were not. Surely that meant _something_. She had to believe it did. She had to believe that there was _hope_ to be had. The realm was in chaos, and it was not a chaos of her own making, unlike in Meereen. Surely she and her dragons must have been brought here to _help_.

Drogon roared. She wondered if they could hear it back at the castle, and she hoped it didn’t worry them too badly. Robb had not wanted her to fly this scouting mission. Jon hadn’t been thrilled with the idea, either. He had warned her not to get too close. Sansa had concerned herself with the cold, and she had gifted Daenerys a brilliant white fur coat that was keeping her warm even above the clouds, where her breath seemed to freeze in her lungs. She had offered to bring Robb with her, but Davos and Tyrion had both shot that idea down quickly. It would only be a short trip, but if both of them were lost…

Robb had watched her go from the battlements. She had seen him, the way he craned his neck back to keep his eyes on her as long as possible. Sansa and Brienne had been standing with him, and Daenerys knew that they would offer her husband some comfort.

It was nice, she thought, to be worried after. Jorah and Tyrion and Missandei and Grey Worm all worried after her, of course. They all loved her in their ways. But there was something different about the way Robb worried for her. It made her feel warm, even all the way up in this frozen, snowy place. She felt _cared_ for. Held.

Drogon pulled up sharply when she was close to the cloud line. She nudged him into a dive so that she could try and see through the trees. Tall grey sentinels shrouded in snow and fog.

Movement, there. Dark darting shapes through the wood.

_Yes_ , she thought. _There they are._

The clouds were producing a snowstorm that rushed towards her. A blizzard that would make it almost impossible for her to see if it caught her. She didn’t intend for it to. She examined it, watched the way it moved ever steadily onward.

He was in there. The Night King. She knew it.

She was sorely tempted. Fly into that blizzard and find him. Track him down. Kill him before he could kill anyone she cared for.

But no. That was what he wanted. And those were the actions of an impulsive girl, not a queen.

“Dracarys,” she said, and the wood below her burned.

She urged Drogon back south, then, towards Winterfell. Behind her, she could feel the heat from the flames. It would not last long against the wind and the snow, she knew, but it was something. She imagined she could smell the dead as they burned.

* * *

When she landed back in the plains outside Winterfell, Rhaegal and Viserion greeted she and Drogon happily. Robb was waiting for her, and he and Brienne strode up together. Brienne no longer shadowed Robb as she had when Daenerys first met her. She stood with him apace, like an equal. Daenerys wondered if she even realized she was doing it. Robb just encouraged that sort of behavior. He never made anyone feel like they were less important.

“You’re all right?” Robb asked. Daenerys smiled and reached for him, allowing him to take her into his arms. If Brienne was at all discomfited by this greeting, she didn’t show it. She only stood and held on to her Lannister sword, watching them.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I found them.” She pointed. The sun was barely poking through the thin grey cloud cover here, but it was obvious where it stopped. The dark clouds in the distance. “The clouds. There’s a storm coming, and the dead are in it.”

“They’re following the storm?” Brienne asked.

“Or the storm is following them,” Daenerys suggested. Robb frowned and stared at the cloud. Daenerys held to his hand tightly, to bring him back to her. “I burned the wood to stop their advance, but I know it won’t do much. We have perhaps a day. Probably less.”

“Yes,” Robb said. “I think you’re right.”

He tore his eyes away from the storm, and he turned instead to look at her. She could see the same terror in him that she had noticed before, when he had lamented ever meeting her, ever bringing her here.

“Are the dragons ready?” he asked.

“They are,” Daenerys replied. That was the one thing she was sure of.

“Brienne,” Robb said, turning to look at his sister’s guard. “Spread the word. The bells will be rung when it’s time.”

Brienne nodded, and she went on her way. Brienne never seemed to hurry anywhere, but her legs were so long that they took her away with enviable speed. Robb watched her go, a frown twisting his lips.

“We knew it would come to this,” he said.

“But it’s an impossible thing to prepare for,” Daenerys agreed. She still knew her husband so little. She had held him the night before when he woke sobbing from a dream, and she had realized that there were still so many gaps in her knowledge of his life before. It seemed she was always the one sharing. These Starks were just so reticent, or perhaps she was merely open in a way he wasn’t. What had he been like as a boy? What had he been like as a husband the first time? She’d held him and thought about the possibilities of him, locked away behind this worried mask. What would he be when the wars were over? She imagined him laughing more. Smiling. She imagined his hair going grey. She imagined loving him.

_Please_ , she thought. _Please let me have that. I want us to grow old so badly._

“Our last night,” he said.

“We should make it a good one,” she replied.

_No_ , she thought. _Not our last night. I refuse to believe that. There will be others._

* * *

He kissed her deeply the moment they were in their rooms. Outside, Winterfell was alive with activity, but they wouldn’t be bothered. He pulled her into the kiss with a roughness that reminded her of Daario and Drogo, but with so much tenderness that it was impossible not to think of him. Robb. Her husband. Sad and lost and broken and whole. She kissed him back, and she wondered what her kisses said about _her_.

Did they say that she loved him? Because she did.

Did they say that she was afraid? Because she was.

Did she say that she had faith? Because she had it.

Faith in her dragons. Faith in her people. Faith in herself. Faith in _them._

_I will not let him die_ , she thought. She climbed atop him in their bed. They were both bare, and the cold air pimpled her flesh, but she only pulled his warmth closer and wrapped her arms around him. He had his hands on her back, He was pulling her closer. They had done this so many times. It was different like this. Different because he shook, and because she was shaking too. He kissed down her throat, and she felt the strength in him as he tried to hold her together. As if he thought she would disappear.

He wasn’t Drogo. She wasn’t Talisa. They were each other, and themselves, and they would be safe as long as they were together. This was all that mattered, at least for now.

* * *

After, her sweat cooled on her skin, and she pulled the furs over them, and she rested her head against his chest. She listened to his heartbeat against her ear. She of all people knew that a heartbeat wasn’t life, but it was still a comfort to listen to. To remember. She would hear it, she was sure, when she needed to. The reminder of its steadiness.

_I love him_ , she thought, because it was true, and because she wanted to remember.

“You’re worried,” he said. She laughed at him quietly.

“They _do_ say you’re quite the tactician,” she said. “It must be your keen observational skills.”

His smile in return was amused, but shadowed, like her own joke had been.

“Must be,” he said. His hand slowly stroked up and down her bare back, and she reveled in the delightful little shivers it gave her.

“Of course I’m worried,” she said. “You’ll be down there fighting, and I won’t have any idea if you’ve survived. I wish you were a normal king. A normal king would stay back and let his men fight for him.”

But he knew she wasn’t serious. He smiled and ducked his head to kiss her brow.

“Maybe he would,” he said. “But you didn’t marry a normal king.”

“No,” she agreed.

“And besides, you’ll be a much bigger target than me,” Robb pointed out. “If anyone should be worried, it’s me.”

He was only barely smiling, and she could tell from her expression that she was doing the same. It was impossible to smile, and yet she couldn’t stop. He was just so…loved. And hers. And here. And alive. She would cling to these moments after, as she had clung to the moments she shared with Drogo.

_It would be easier if I didn’t love him_ , she thought. If it was a sensible marriage made for sensible reasons. It had seemed a gift to fall in love with a man with whom an alliance made sense. Only now did she realize what a poisoned gift it was. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the songs for this chapter are Glas/Green by Solomon Grey and If I Be Wrong by Wolf Larsen


	62. Jaime VIII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa gives a gift to Jaime, and Jaime gives a gift to Brienne.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there are only 2 Jaime and Brienne scenes in season 8 that have rights, so is it any surprise that I stole them both?

The time for training was over, and the courtyard was empty. There had been men and boys and women and girls sparring and practicing and learning every time he walked the walls, no matter how late or how early it was, but it was ghostly quiet now. This was their last night. The dead were coming. Everything felt frozen in place, like the heavy snowfall had seeped into everyone and everything and turned it all to ice. The camps were quiet, somber, lit with fires that wafted smoke that smelled of their best meat for the stews that brave camp followers and stewards passed out to the people who would be fighting in the upcoming battle. Some camps were louder than others—his own were among the loudest. Jaime watched them from the walls, spotting several of his lieutenants sharing mead and meat with the Dothraki. It was that kind of night. Several camps had broken out into song, and from the top of the wall, all their voices blended together. It wasn’t quite pleasant to listen to, but it made him feel something anyway. He couldn’t quite describe it.

He didn’t join them. He instead took himself to the warm baths beneath Winterfell, where he scrubbed himself clean. He put on the new deep blue tunic that Sansa had gifted him only an hour before. She had embroidered silver lions along the collar, along with a few golden sunbursts, as if the colors were not obvious enough. She’d given him a matching glove for his hand, and a soft covering for his stump, made of the same material.

“If I wear this in front of her, she will drop dead from embarrassment,” he said when Sansa laid the clothing in his arms, though he knew he would treasure it.

“Perhaps there will be an occasion to wear it afterward. A happy one.”

“Optimistic. That isn’t like you.”

“I have to be. What else can I do? Despair?”

“No. That’s my brother’s chosen response, and I have had quite enough of it myself. _One_ of us should be optimistic.”

“Yes, you’ve had quite enough of it,” Sansa mused. He saw the way her hands quivered when she folded her arms, like she was trying to hide a weakness. He ached for her, for the things she thought she had to hide from him. “You must not make the same mistakes you made when you fought Brienne.”

“They weren’t mistakes. They were choices. And they aren’t choices I’m eager to make a second time. I was…” He still hardly knew how to describe _what_ he had been that day. Hopeless. Grieving for something that he’d never truly had. Empty. “Lost,” he finally settled on. “I’m not that man anymore. I hardly understand him.”

“Good,” Sansa said, and she laid her hand on top of the new shirt, which was still draped over his arm. Her smile shook as much as her hands had. “You will survive, Jaime. If I have to order it, I will.”

“Would you like another oath?” he asked her.

“No. You promised me your friendship and your counsel, and I expect to call on both of those when the battles are done. You _will_ come back. I have few enough friends. I refuse to give up one so dear to me.”

Jaime had hugged her, then. It was hardly appropriate, but there was no one to see. Brienne had accompanied Robb to wait for Daenerys as she flew north to scout, and he had seen Arya following Jon into the crypts. Tyrion and Bran were off with Varys, having some cryptic and horridly boring conversation about past kings, probably. It was only Jaime and Sansa now, and though their friendship was still strange to the people around them, they understood each other. The letters had bonded them, and now that they were in the same place, it was easy to be her friend. Holding her made him think of Myrcella, on the boat in Dorne. The one time he had been allowed to acknowledge a child. The only time he had been called _father_. He wasn’t anyone’s father any longer, but he felt an affection for Sansa that was so much like those few golden moments before his daughter’s death.

He felt that same affection as he looked at himself in the glass once he was bathed and dressed, later on. The dark blue color looked well on him, even with all the new lines on his face and the gray in his hair and beard. The lions and the sunbursts were _absurd_ to look at, but that didn’t stop him from looking. Sansa had done beautiful work. It felt a little like wearing a favor from a lady in the joust. Cersei had indulged him exactly once, giving him a plain handkerchief that he tied around his wrist, and he had never fought better. He could hardly imagine how Brienne would react if he tried to ask her for a favor before the battle, so this would have to do. Something worn close to his heart. He put a doublet over it so that she would not see.

Sansa would likely be annoyed with him for wearing what was plainly meant to be a wedding shirt into the battle, but he still had so little hope that he would survive. If he was to die, he would rather die having worn it, knowing its intended purpose. He should perhaps be embarrassed to remain so dramatic at his age, but no one had ever accused him of experiencing a normal range of emotions. He buckled his armor, knowing the shirt was there. He fastened his cloak, knowing the shirt was there. He put on his new steel hand, gifted to him by Tyrion the previous night, knowing the shirt was there. It felt burned into his skin. He felt like a boy again, indulging in foolish romanticism in tying his sister’s favor against his skin, but why _not_ indulge if this was to be his last night alive?

The new fabric was cool on his bath-warm flesh, reminding him of its presence always.

It reminded him what he was fighting for.

Her. Them. _All of them._ What was right.

He had finally made a choice he could be proud of, and every day he woke expecting to regret it, but it hadn’t happened yet. Even knowing that he would surely die in the battle to come hadn’t changed anything. Even knowing that the dragon queen would be turning her focus on Cersei after this was over hadn’t changed it. Tyrion had stopped directing guards to stand outside his door. Even Brienne stopped looking surprised every morning when he sat beside her at breakfast.

She still didn’t believe that he loved her. He hadn’t mentioned it in days. He hadn’t figured out _how_ to; she avoided every hint of it. She glared distrustfully at him every time she thought he might be headed in that direction. He thought he might be more despairing of her ever figuring it out if he thought that there was a hope that they’d both survive, but as it was he found it almost funny. Of _course_ she didn’t believe him. Everyone _else_ understood it as truth, but not Brienne. The one person he craved understanding from. That was simply the way his life unfolded.

The gods truly were a miserable lot, but they had been kinder to him than he deserved. They could have killed him at Highgarden, but they had not. They could have killed him when Locke cut off his hand, but they had not. He could have died in the Whispering Wood, without ever meeting Brienne, but they allowed him to survive _that_ , too. Hells, they could have spared Bran Stark, lightened his footsteps across the roof of that broken Winterfell tower. They could have brought his whispers to King Robert, and Ilyn Payne’s sword could have spelled an end for he and Cersei and the children so that the war would not have started. But the gods had favored _him_ , in that. He’d kept his head, and he’d taken the boy’s legs, and they had _rewarded_ him, somehow, with meeting the one woman who would ever look beyond the Kingslayer’s veneer of stubborn pride.

Perhaps there _were_ no gods. Perhaps it was all an accident. Meeting her. Knowing her. Remembering what it was like to want to be _like_ her. But that was too empty and too sad to contemplate. He still wanted it to _mean_ something. He wanted his life, his survival until now, to _matter._

He could think of at least one thing that would make it all worth it. One good act that would perhaps make his tally in the world just a bit more even. A deed that he could be proud of without question or doubt.

He found his way to the Great Hall, where people had gathered to share a last meal and a few drinks. Everyone was mingling in a way they usually didn’t. Groups and sides forgotten. Dothraki and Westerosi. Lannisters and Starks. Even as a child he might have thought the unity too on the nose. The cynical bastard he had grown into _hated_ it, though he could not suppress a thrill of excitement to be a part of something like it. When he’d first been inducted into the Kingsguard, he had imagined what his page would say in the White Book. More and more, as he got older, he had dreaded it. What _could_ the book say but that he had killed his king? What could it say except that he was an oathbreaker who should have been removed from service but stayed in it for reasons no one could figure out? He had fucked his sister and fathered three bastards and pushed a child out a window. The deeds that would be written would not be good ones. But now, here. His choice to arm Brienne and send her to fulfill the oaths he could not. His choice to follow the dragon queen whose father he had slain. Bending the knee and swearing to serve a Stark daughter. It was a chance at a lasting redemption, at least in the eyes of everyone who survived. He could hope, even if he couldn’t quite yet believe it was deserved.

He spotted Brienne at last. She was speaking with Davos and Edd and Sam. They were all sitting at one of the long tables, drinking and talking. Podrick wandered up with a cup of something for her, and she took an unenthusiastic sip. When she looked up and saw Jaime watching, she looked away. Her skin was already pinking at the cheeks. He smiled wider.

He reached her side. How was it that she didn’t see it? Everyone else did. Edd moved aside so that Jaime could sit beside her. _He_ knew! Jaime didn’t even know the man!

The gathered group spoke quietly, reverently, of the battle ahead. Jaime was sick of talk of the battle. He had earlier left Tyrion for that very reason. Still strategizing and moving companies around even though they’d decide again in a few moments to put them back where they had been from the start. It was all useless. Battle lines never held for long in a situation like this. It would turn to a mad scramble for life, if there was any chance at all. The dead were almost upon them, and there was nothing more to do but wait. People hated that, though. The waiting. Jaime hated it too, but he would rather not add _pretending_ on top of it.

“Can we speak outside for a moment?” he asked, low and quiet, murmured very close to Brienne’s ear so that no one else could hear him. She looked at him warily. The big redheaded fellow blundered into their conversation. _Tormund_. Jaime had seen him sparring often with Brienne and Arya and Jon. If half of Winterfell knew how Jaime felt about Brienne, surely _all_ of Winterfell knew how Tormund felt. He stared at her without reservation. He panted after her in, well, in probably a similar fashion as Jaime himself, but at least Jaime was _civil_ about it. Tormund _gaped._ He did things like waggling his tongue and bluntly talk about letting her hold him down while she rode him. He didn’t have the decency to keep his private fantasies locked in his head the way Jaime had been doing for _months._ He was uncouth and distasteful, a total parody, and Jaime couldn’t _stand_ him. He tensed for some kind of confrontation, but Tormund was already quite drunk, and he babbled nonsensically to Davos for a while about something. Brienne turned to look at Jaime once she realized it was safe.

“I could use some fresh air,” she said, and so Jaime was forced to internally thank the oafish man for his assistance, however accidental it had been.

* * *

Outside, they were alone, at least. Brienne took Jaime through the side of the keep and out into the godswood. He was glad of it; the courtyard felt too impersonal. Here, the snow was falling, and the sounds of the preparations were very far off. It was just he and Brienne in all the world.

She was bundled and warm in her cloak, and there was a snowflake on her eyelash, and he found himself staring at it, past it, into her eyes. How was it possible that she didn’t see? She watched him warily. _I love you_ , he wanted to say. _Just tell me how to prove it to you._

“I wanted to thank you,” he said instead, because it was true, even if it wasn’t the whole of it.

“Thank me?” she asked him. “Why?”

She was still so tense. No, he would not tell her again tonight. The night before a battle seemed like a good time to air everything that you thought you needed to say before the end, but what if it wasn’t something that they wanted to hear? He could swallow it. He could show her, by watching her back in the battle. By refusing to let her fall. She had no use for his words. She didn’t believe them, and she didn’t seem to want them, either, for reasons he had run out of time to determine. Perhaps she would have an easier time understanding his actions.

“For this,” he said, and he laid his steel hand against his side, where the scar from the wound she had given him still tingled when he touched it.

“Jaime,” she warned, sighing.

“I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t given it to me,” he said. He was unused to speaking so plainly, but with Brienne, it was always easier. Necessary, too, because she hated his sarcastic words and his double and triple meanings. Hated them and didn’t understand them and grew annoyed by them constantly. “I burdened you. I chose you to be my executioner. I shouldn’t have done that. I saw no way out for me but death, and you refused to give it to me. I have never felt so much like the man I have wished I could be, and it started with your sword in my side. So thank you.”

“You made the choice to stay and fight,” she said. Stubborn as ever. _I didn’t choose_ , he wanted to say. _I didn’t choose to love you_. But he _did_ choose to follow her. He chose to stay. He chose to be a better man. He chose to listen to those parts of him that wanted to be good instead of the parts of him that insisted that it was too late and that he was already too much of a monster to make up for anything.

“I did,” he said, amused reluctantly by her stubborn refusal to admit to any part in that choice. “And do you really think that you had no bearing on that at all?”

She shook her head, and she tucked her chin deeper beneath her cloak. He chuckled at her, and her face scrunched up with annoyance.

“You’ve made your own choices. I’m pleased you’ve made them, but...”

“Oh, you’re pleased I’ve made them,” he teased. “Brienne…”

He stepped closer, and she allowed him. It was strange to look up into her eyes, as ever. Strange because he was used to being taller than the woman he loved. There was something about looking up at her that made him feel like the softness he craved was possible. Cersei’s gaze up at him was always defiant. Resenting him for being bigger, being stronger, being all the things she wished to be. His own up at Brienne was the opposite. It was a choice to allow it. A choice to allow her to see him so plainly.

Brienne bit her lip as she looked down at him. Her back was very straight, as if she thought to lean away from him but couldn’t manage to make herself do it, like she was frightened of being rude or scaring him off. He reached for her hand, and she allowed it. His gloved fingers wrapped around hers.

“Thank you,” he repeated, and he kept his eyes on hers when he lifted the back of her hand to his lips so that he could kiss it. She didn’t snatch her hand back like he was expecting her to, though her fingers _did_ tighten on his. A reflex of some kind. She drew in a sharp gasp, too. She shook her head.

“You shouldn’t thank me for that,” she said.

“Should it be an apology, then? For making you do it?”

She shook her head again, but this time it was more forceful.

“Jaime,” she said. “I understood why.”

“Of course you didn’t,” he said. “How could you?”

“What does that mean?” she asked. She was so defensive. She didn’t understand him at all.

“Because you’re too good. You’ve never failed as badly as I have. You’ve never lost as much as I’ve lost. And even if you did, you’d have your goodness and your honor to keep you moving forward. I didn’t have that. Not until you gave it back to me.”

“I gave you a scar,” she said. “Nothing more.”

“You gave me a _chance_. No one else would have.”

She was not trying to look away from him, the way she so often did. She was staring at him still.

“Jaime,” she started. He took a few steps back, releasing her hand reluctantly.

“I wanted to give you something in return,” he said. “You have been wary of accepting my…recent gifts. But I hope you’ll realize that this is the only thing that makes sense.” He smiled at her. His palm was sweating, and he furled it into a fist and then unfurled it before reaching for his sword at his hip. He drew it out, and she stared at him. “Kneel, Lady Brienne.”

“What are you doing? Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous? You’re a truer knight than I’ve ever known. You’re a truer knight than I’ve ever been. Frankly, it would be unfair of me to allow this injustice to continue, and I’ve been trying to be better about righting injustices.”

“I can’t be a knight,” Brienne insisted. Jaime tilted his head. Her panic and doubt were mingled together with her longing, and he knew that it was the right choice.

“And why not?” he asked.

“You _know_ why.”

“Because you’re taller than I am? Because you could beat me in a fair fight now that I’ve had my hand taken from me? Because you’re sworn to my family’s enemies?” Brienne glared at him. “Any knight can make another knight, Brienne. I know the rules of it even if I’ve been horrid at following them. Now will you kneel? Podrick here will witness it. Won’t you, Podrick?”

Shame-faced, Podrick slipped out from where he had been lurking by the door, obviously worried about his lady’s honor.

“Yes, ser,” he said. He sent an apologetic smile Brienne’s way.

“I’d do it in front of everyone in that bloody great hall if I thought you’d let me live through it,” Jaime said. He meant to make it into a joke, but he found that it didn’t sound like one. It sounded too intense. Too revealing. Like everything else about him. But Brienne didn’t look away from his eyes, and he took that as a good sign. “I want every person standing with us against the dead to know exactly what you are, and what you are is the most honorable knight in the seven kingdoms. Catelyn Stark was right about you, and she was right to trust you, and I was an idiot for ever doubting it. This will be the best choice I’ve ever made. Brienne, please. Kneel.”

She knelt. Slowly, in the snow, and he could see that she was trembling slightly, as if she believed it to be some trick. Podrick came closer to watch. His eyes were already red with building tears, and it made Jaime smile. He adjusted his grip on his sword. He remembered his own knighting. Looking up into Arthur Dayne’s face with the naive eyes of a boy. Telling himself that he was going to be a good knight. A true knight. A knight who would make Arthur proud. He had failed at that. He had done nothing but fail himself for years and years, choosing the worst paths to follow and the incorrect impulses, chasing love and warmth that he was too much a fool to realize was always out of his reach. But Brienne…if he could give her this. If he could make her into a knight. Perhaps that would be enough.

Ser Arthur Dayne had knighted an unworthy man, it was true, but perhaps that unworthy man had been knighted so that he could pass on the gift to someone who embodied the vows in a way so few knights truly did.

“In the name of the name of the Warrior, I charge you to be brave. In the name of the Father, I charge you to be just. In the name of the Mother, I charge you to defend the innocent.” She gazed up at him. Her expression had gone steadily more incredulous. Watery, her eyes flooding with emotion. She could not believe that he was actually going through with it. He spoke firmly, clearly. His voice didn’t shake. He didn’t smile. He wanted her to remember this, when he was gone. He wanted her to remember that when it counted, he took this one thing absolutely seriously. Nothing would taint this gift that he was giving her. Not his feelings. Not her own. This was a gift earned by her honor and her dedication. It was being given to her by a man who loved her, but it was not being given to her _because_ he loved her. It was hers. All of it. Everything. It was hers. “Arise, Brienne of Tarth. A knight of the seven kingdoms.”

She did, standing on legs that didn’t shake. _His_ had, when he stood before Arthur Dayne. She stared at him. He finally allowed the tension in his body to melt away, and he smiled at her at last. She smiled back, a fuller smile than she had ever shown him. The sound of Podrick clapping echoed off the stone walls of Winterfell.

The lad disappeared with a few words about telling everyone what had happened. Jaime sheathed his sword. He didn’t reach for Brienne, though he wished to. He did not try to say anything else.

He loved her. He loved her. He did. But this wasn’t about love. This was about what was right. Brienne had been a knight as long as he had known her, and she deserved to be one in name. This was the right thing to do for the realm, not just her, and not just his own fool heart. He would only cheapen it by reaching for anything more.

When she fought the dead, she would fight as Ser Brienne of Tarth, a knight of the seven kingdoms. She would defend her chosen home, and she would defend her chosen lady, and she would be exactly as a knight from a song.

And this time, when he fell in battle and did not rise again, at least he would have given her that. Something that she could remember him by. Something that could perhaps do a little toward canceling out all the shit he had brought to the world.

And perhaps one day, after enough time had passed, she would remember the way he had looked at her, and the way he had dedicated himself to protecting her, and the way he had smiled at her after he knighted her, and perhaps _then_ she would finally understand just how much he had loved her. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the songs for this chapter are I of the Storm by Of Monsters and Men and Guiding Light by Mumford and Sons, because I was having a lot of feelings when I made these selections, apparently.


	63. Sansa XI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon goes to Sansa's room to tell her that the dead are approaching.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was gonna wait til later to post this, but then a storm happened, and parts of my town are losing power, so I'm getting this done before the same thing happens to me!

The knock on her door came as she was beginning to contemplate undressing for bed. Most of the women who remained were likely already asleep, but she could perhaps find _someone_ to help her with her dress. She could probably even manage it herself, though it would be difficult. She had sewn the tops of her dresses to be so tight that reaching the clasps in the back was nearly impossible. The thought of struggling through it was exhausting. It seemed pointless, anyway, to want even a moment of comfort without her gown constricting her.

The dead were coming. The dead were almost upon them. How was she supposed to think about anything else?

How was she supposed to _sleep_?

She wanted to be down in the courtyard. She wanted to be with Jon, or Arya, or Robb, or with Bran, even. There were so many people she loved. So many people she should be with. Theon was with his sister, and Jaime would be with his brother, or hopefully with Brienne. Brienne would be with her men, or Pod, or Jaime. Sansa knew that she would be welcomed by any of them. She would be welcomed by the nurses and the soldiers and the people who worked in the kitchens. She had walked the halls with Missandei and Daenerys earlier in the day, and her soldiers had all bowed to her, pleased to see that she had not evacuated. She could be among them, as well.

But she was _so_ afraid. Her hands shook. She had hoped that she would be brave, but she wasn’t. She couldn’t be out there among all those people. Her heart was racing, and she kept wanting to cry. She couldn’t let anyone see her like this. She would swallow it all back when she had to, but she couldn’t yet.

She hesitated before opening the door when the knock came, but she wouldn’t hide behind it like a child. She was Sansa Stark of Winterfell. If someone needed her, she would help them. If someone requested her company, she would go to them. She didn’t have the luxury of fear.

It was Jon outside, in the hall. The expression on his face…

“They’re close,” she guessed.

“Daenerys reported back. Brienne caught me on my way here. They’ll be here within the day.”

Sansa nodded. She suddenly felt…she could have been away. She could have run. It was too late for that now. She was trapped.

“Thank you for telling me,” she heard herself say. It sounded very distant. She felt _cold_ , oddly. Like she could no longer feel her fingers.

“Sansa,” Jon said. He sounded so…she wasn’t sure. She could never figure out what he was thinking. He hid himself away better than _she_ did, sometimes. He didn’t seem like he was trying to hide now. There was a cracked-open quality to his expression, like he had been dealt a terrible blow. Of _course_ he had. It had been nothing but blows for Jon for weeks now, and he was going to have to go out there and _fight._ She was so selfish. So silly and selfish and still so stupid, sometimes. Running wouldn’t do her any good. Hiding wouldn’t do her any good, either. Jon could die. Within the day, he said. He could be dead within the day. She stared at him, and he stared back at her, and he might be _dead_ by the time the sun rose again. She suddenly needed him in her room, the way he used to be so often when they first took back Winterfell and they weren’t entirely themselves yet. She gestured him in, and she was relieved when he came, even though she still felt silly and stupid and all those other things. He probably had so much to do. He probably wanted to be with his friends, or with Arya, or with Robb. Sam and Gilly, maybe. Tormund. She shouldn’t have asked him in.

She closed the door behind them anyway. They were safe here. It was just the two of them, and she could breathe easily again. She looked at him, and she told herself to memorize every part of him. She’d never done it for her mother or her father or Rickon, and their faces had already begun to fade. She didn’t want _him_ to fade, too. 

“Jon,” she said, and she reached for his hands. He gave them to her. He was looking at her with…she wasn’t sure. She couldn’t say. _Something_ in his gaze. It gave her courage. “I wish you didn’t have to fight.”

“I know,” he said. He held more tightly to her hands. “I know. I wish I could stay here with you. Protect you. But I can’t.”

“No,” she said. He was one of their best fighters. He had to be out there. Untrained men who could barely lift the swords they’d been given were being sent out to fight. Jon couldn’t stay inside, safe and warm, just because she was scared to be left alone. “I’m.” _Afraid. Terrified. Sorry._ “I just wish…” _I knew you would be safe. You would be with me while I was afraid. I could tell you everything._

“Sansa,” he said. His voice was strangled, odd, not like Jon at all. He looked as frightened as she felt. She felt closer to him than she had ever been before, and she wanted to sob. He was letting her see so much of himself. She had no idea if she could afford to do the same. Surely if she let her guard down at all, even for a moment…surely she wouldn’t be able to put it back up again. Jon took a bracing breath, and he said, “I need to tell you something. If Arya is wrong, if this is…it’s alright. Just tell me, and I’ll leave the room, and we’ll never have to speak about it. But I don’t want to go out there without telling you. You should know. If I don’t make it…”

“Jon,” she said, startled.

“You were wrong.” He took another deep breath, and she squeezed his hands, hoping that it would make it easier for him to speak. He looked at her. He was still so afraid. “I love you. Not as I should. Not as a sister. As everything. You told me once that no one would ever marry you for love, and I haven’t stopped thinking of it since. You were wrong. I would marry you. I didn’t say it then. Maybe I shouldn’t say it now. But I started loving you when you came to me at Castle Black, and I have loved you more every day since. Arya says…Arya says that you feel the same. That you think…that you’re afraid you’re broken because you love me too. If she’s wrong, that’s…”

“She isn’t,” Sansa blurted. She swayed forward. She couldn’t look away from his eyes. The tension in him eased, and though he didn’t smile, his expression softened, and she knew he was close to it.

“I’ve never done this before. Not properly. I’ve never told anyone…never confessed any feelings to anyone. Not like this. And it’s _you_ , and I thought…I know Arya knows everything now, but I didn’t believe her.”

“I don’t know if I would have, either,” Sansa admitted quietly. She _still_ couldn’t believe it, and he had spoken the words aloud. “You love me.”

“I do,” he admitted. “And you…”

“I love you.” It was so simple, saying the words aloud. Why had she thought it would be anything else?

“I know it’s…it’s not going to be an easy thing,” Jon said slowly. “I’m your cousin, but I was your brother before, and I know the lords are going to question it. And I’m still a bastard. I’m not the proper sort of lord they’re going to want you to…marry.”

_Marry_ , she thought, dimly. _He’s already talking about marrying me._

She knew Jon. She knew him from weeks together at Castle Black, and on the road, looking for support. She knew him from the moons that followed, running Winterfell together and becoming friends, and all the while steadily falling in love with him so far that by the time she thought to stop herself, it was too late.

She knew him so well that she knew he didn’t say things like this aloud. Not unless he was sure of them. Her heart seemed to constrict in her chest. She felt warm, like in her panics, but she wasn’t panicked at all. She was… _loved._ She was loved, and she had been so sure that no one ever would. Jon didn’t want her for her claim. He didn’t want her for her name. He’d had plenty of opportunities to be made Stark. He didn’t need to marry her for that. He just _wanted_ to.

“Joffrey was the sort of lord I wanted to marry,” she reminded him gently. “And _he_ was a bastard, too. In more ways than one.” Jon smiled at her. It was still disbelieving, still not quite certain, but it _was_ a smile. It made him look so young. “When we were in Kings Landing, father tried to break off my betrothal to Joffrey. He said that he would make me another match. A match with someone brave, and gentle, and strong. I told him I didn’t _want_ that. I wanted Joffrey.” That made Jon laugh, and he looked down at his feet. He looked so _bashful_ , and it made her sad for him. She knew he’d had a Wildling lover, Ygritte. He’d told her the sad story one night at Castle Black when she was too afraid and in too much pain to sleep. He’d looked so sad, and Sansa had been so sad _for_ him. She’d never been truly in love, but she could imagine. And now…he’d never done this before, he said. Not properly. He’d never wooed someone. It was different with Ygritte, where love just _happened_ to them in the middle of everything. He looked so young, so… _gentle_ , she thought, with a wry smile. “My point,” she said. “Is that I think of that a lot. Tyrion was gentle, in his way. Ramsay prized himself on strength, though half his strength came from madness. I didn’t think it could exist all in the same person at once. I thought a man like father described couldn’t exist. Maybe in the stories. But I tried to _be_ that man. I tried to be brave. I tried to be gentle. I tried to be strong. Every day in Kings Landing. Maybe it was…guilt, I suppose?”

“Sansa…”

“We have all done things we regret. I had a hand in father’s death, and it swallowed me whole while I was trapped there. And I _tried_. I wanted to show him that I was learning. I didn’t need Joffrey. I didn’t need a man to be brave and gentle and strong. That man didn’t exist in Kings Landing, no matter how hard I sought him out. So I wanted to _be_ that man. But you exist, too. You were there all along, and I never noticed until later. And then you were all I _could_ notice.”

“Sansa.” This time it was fond, not alarmed, and Jon held tighter to her hands. He’d never done this before. He’d never had someone say pretty words to him just for the sake of saying them. She wondered what Ygritte had been like. She knew from Tormund that Ygritte had been wild, with Sansa’s red hair and Arya’s willful nature. Had Ygritte ever told Jon what pretty grey eyes he had? Had she ever told him that she liked the softness of his hair? Sansa wasn’t sure that most men liked being told those things, but she imagined Jon would. He always looked so surprised and grateful for every compliment she gave him.

“I doubt father was thinking of you when he said it,” she pointed out with a grin, which made him laugh again. A deep, quiet, rumbling sound that made her want to pull him closer. “But he was describing you all the same. It just took me quite a while to realize it. Even when I didn’t know the truth. Even when you were still my half-brother. I knew you were exactly the man that father had described.” She watched the words land with him. She watched the way that a disbelieving, pleased glow lit on his face. She wanted to make him smile again and again. He was so _dear_. “I don’t care that you’re still a bastard,” she said. “I don’t. I don’t care what the lords say. I would marry you gladly.”

“You would?” he asked.

“You seem so shocked. Why would you even mention it if you didn’t think I’d say yes?” she asked, and he grinned at her so wide that she couldn’t help but smile back.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Madness, I suppose.”

“ _Madness_ ,” she said in reply. Her nerves were scattering, leaving her feeling _full_ , excited. Her hands were shaking from it. She had not expected to feel this happy about anything again. She _had_ felt it, the day they arrived at Castle Black and Jon welcomed her with an embrace. Happiness, safety, a giddy kind of shock because she had _done_ it. She had survived.

“I thought it was,” Jon admitted. “I thought it was the red woman’s magic. It was the only way to describe it. You were there, and I…I _hated_ how badly I cared for you. It wasn’t natural. And when I found out the truth…I don’t know. Then I suppose I thought it must have been Targaryen madness instead.”

“ _I_ was convinced I spent too much time with Cersei,” Sansa said, and Jon laughed at her self-deprecating tone. “But it wasn’t that. It was just…you.”

“And it was you,” Jon agreed.

She felt her breath slowing, her lips parting. She understood that he was going to kiss her, and she was ready. She had never been kissed by a man she wanted to kiss her, and she was afraid that it would feel as awkward and as unwanted as those other kisses had, but when he pressed his lips softly to hers, she felt a _warmth_ instead. Tingling through her, racing along her skin. He was kissing her, and he was gentle because he knew she was afraid, and she _liked_ it. She put her arms around him, and she kissed him back. She was afraid she wouldn’t know how to do it properly, but it was like an instinct after that initial fear. Like something she had always known how to do. He pressed one hand to the small of her back, and he drew her closer, and she was quite sure she could never be close enough to him.

_Gods_ , she thought. _Surely I am dreaming._

But no, she was awake, and Jon was kissing her. She broke the kiss first, and she looked at him. Searching his eyes for any regret or any indication that he hadn’t felt the same wonderful things _she_ had just felt.

“Robb will kill me,” he said, and it startled a laugh out of her. Surprisingly loud in the silence. “Maybe I’ll deserve it.”

“No you won’t,” she said. There were so few moments in her life now when she was allowed to be entirely artless around others, but she was artless then. “You deserve everything good.”

He smiled at her helplessly, and he pressed a lingering kiss to her cheek. This still felt like a dream. If only he wasn’t about to face the dead. If only they weren’t all about to die.

“After. We should talk about it after. But I wanted you to know. That I would marry you.”

“And I would marry you,” she answered. His smile was so disbelieving, and she imagined that hers was the same. He kissed her again, even softer this time. “Stay here,” she found herself saying. “Sleep here. Please. I won’t sleep anyway, but it would make me feel better if…”

“Of course,” he said. He seemed nervous, untethered, but _she_ wasn’t. Her hands weren’t shaking anymore.

* * *

He slept in her bed while she sewed by the fire, and she could hear him breathing. It was a comfort she wouldn’t have guessed she needed, but her fingers were steady as she lost herself in the intricate details of her work, and she knew that his nearness was at least partially the cause.

At some point, she heard him wake. He sat up. He clearly hadn’t meant to sleep so long, but she was glad he did. Every stolen hour seemed like a gift. Precious minutes that would give him strength in the night to come. Sansa turned and looked at him. She could feel her smile as it crept slowly across her face. She stood, and she carried the doublet with her, and she sat on the bed, on the empty side.

“You should sleep, Sansa,” he murmured, and she nodded.

“I will,” she promised. She reached out and touched his hair, because she could. Then she laid the doublet on the bed. She had embroidered his white wolf sigil on the collar, and it was all black leather, finer than his others. “I’ve been making this,” she said.

“Sansa…”

“I wanted you to have something of me with you,” she said. “I’ve been working on it when I had a spare moment.”

“It’s beautiful,” he said.

She had noticed how often he wore the cloak she made for him. Of course he _had_ to wear it; it was cold in the north, and he had given his spares to those who needed them. But she saw how proudly he wore it, and how snug he looked in it, and it had given her a desire to make him other things. Nicer things. Before tonight, she never would have thought that he would return her affections, as broken and damaged as they were, and so this doublet would have been her secret way of giving him a favor for the battle to come. The leather was thick at the chest, padded and warm. It wouldn’t stop a sword, but she could pretend. Some foolish dream of her love woven into every piece of thread, every bit of stitching, keeping him safe.

“You should sleep,” he said again. She shook her head. She stood again and smoothed out her skirts.

“I can’t,” she said. “I’m too afraid to sleep.”

“Humor me,” he said. She hesitated. She still hadn’t taken off her dress, and she decided that she wouldn’t. _Small steps first_ , she told herself.

When she was a child, before Arya was born, she used to sneak out during thunderstorms and go running to Robb’s rooms to hide in his bed. Jon had often been there, the two of them telling ghost stories in the dark, and they would let her lie between them and tell her nicer stories, instead.

But they weren’t children anymore, and lying in bed with a man had meant nothing good for Sansa since.

She fiddled with the tie of her cloak before finally undoing it and leaving only the gown. She climbed under the covers quickly. Jon had slept atop them, not wanting to muss her sheets, and they were cool against her skin. She felt wrong sleeping in her dress. She knew she wouldn’t be able to fall asleep quickly, and she knew she didn’t have much time to sleep as it was. But still. She wanted to try.

He ran his fingers through the hair that fanned out across the pillow towards him. He looked like he was getting away with something. Doing something wrong. She felt the same way.

“Will you stay?” she asked.

“Until I’m called away,” he answered. She nodded, and she shifted closer, and his hand moved to her arm. The blankets and her dress stood between them, but she shivered as if he was touching her skin. She smiled, after, to let him know that it was all right.

Her eyes quickly began to droop, and he stroked her arm over the blankets until they slid closed. She was still smiling.

* * *

When she woke, he was gone, and the bells were ringing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Jenny of Oldstones by Florence and the Machine


	64. Bran II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The battle starts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hopefully? I can get all four Long Night chapters posted today. I would like to remind y'all that this is a ding-dong story, and if you're expecting some grand mythos and wild incorporation of book canon elements, you haven't learned anything from my previous 60 whatever chapters and my constant begging for you to understand what you're reading, so I can't take responsibility for your disappointment! 
> 
> (doesn't mean I won't continue to feel bad about it even though I shouldn't!)

Bran’s body sat beneath the heart tree in the godswood, where his powers were strongest. There were men around him, guarding him. It was pointless; no amount of them would be able to stop the Night King if the army broke through the walls. But guarding Bran was what Theon Greyjoy needed, and having Bran guarded was what the rest of the Starks needed, and so Bran gave it to them.

Bran’s mind was only rarely in the godswood. Being near the heart tree gave him the strength to stay warged into other creatures for as long as he needed without returning to himself. He jumped from horses to wolves to ravens. He ran and flew and stalked through the trees. Ghost welcomed him. Nymeria, lurking among the sentinels with her pack, striking down wights, fought him every time, though she recognized him, and knew what he was. The dragons had fought him at first, but they were intelligent creatures, and eventually they realized that he meant them no harm, and they handed control to him easily. Rhaegal welcomed him easiest, and so Rhaegal was the one he preferred.

The ravens _always_ welcomed him. There was nothing quite as easy as warging into a raven. Bran flew between them, never staying in one for long, because it would be too easy for the Night King to find him if he lingered in any one mind. It was easier to keep moving, anyway. There was so much happening, and it happened all at once, everywhere. Bran wasn’t a creature given to panic any longer, but even _he_ found himself occasionally overwhelmed by the impossibility of being in every place he needed to be. 

The armies of the living had amassed outside Winterfell’s walls, with their trenches and trebuchets and their lines and lines of fighters. The wights were faster than most of the living had expected them to be, and many on the front lines fell before they could adjust to the speed at which the dead things moved. But those who survived _did_ adjust, and they held firm, and soon the dead were piling high, slowing their advance. Daenerys burned enormous paths, cutting down whole swaths of wights with her dragons, and the front lines of Winterfell’s forces pushed forward. Melisandre the red witch had been waiting in the Unsullied camp until the battle, and she lit the trenches that protected the castle walls, and she lit the swords of the armies afire. When the living moved forward, she left the safety of the shadow of Winterfell’s walls, and she moved along behind them with her Unsullied escort, and she burned the bodies of the dead, men and wight alike, so that they would not rise again. Bran had seen her before, had seen her hand in the events of the past years, and he had advised Robb not to send her away. She was misguided, but her power was true. Davos had demanded her execution, and Arya had recommended the same with gritted teeth and a bone-deep hatred for the witch in her voice.

_Fire_ , Bran had reminded Robb when he saw that his brother wavered out of loyalty to his Hand and sister. _We need fire._ And so Robb had given the red woman a place.

Theon Greyjoy had been given his place by Robb as well, guarding Bran, though Arya and Jon had both objected, and though there weren’t many northmen who would agree to defer to the former turncloak. The people who stayed in the godswood were mostly Ironborn, though some of the north had volunteered—primarily because they didn’t trust the Ironborn to do the job. Alys Karstark with her bow stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Theon, trusting the Starks more than anyone. It meant something to Theon to have that trust, and to be trusted to guard Bran _specifically_ , though Bran wasn’t really Bran any longer. Bran would have preferred he guard Sansa, because Sansa would be alone among his siblings. Arya was there for now, but she would not remain.

Arya, Varys, Tyrion, Davos, and Missandei stood with Sansa on the wall to watch the first clash of the armies. They could see almost nothing but smoke and torches as the wights barreled out of the darkness. An endless wave of them, piling on each other, tripping over each other in their mindless haste to _fight._ As time passed, Tyrion went down into the crypts with his guards to ensure the passage that led out of the castle remained open for evacuation. Varys disappeared with Sam and Gilly to prepare the Great Hall to receive the wounded, and Davos went with him to organize the workers who would keep track of the various companies and their shifts. The second wave of fighters waited just inside the courtyard, packing it, ready for the gates to open so that they could go out. The third wave would try and sleep until the second wave went out and the remains of the first came back in, and then they would prepare in the courtyard, like the second shift had. The dead never tired, and they never needed rest. Shifts were the only way to keep exhaustion from overwhelming the living fighters.

Long after the others had left the walls, Sansa and Missandei remained, not speaking, looking down at the armies as they advanced. Their eyes strained for any signs of their loved ones. Arya paced, her lips tingling from the kiss she had granted Gendry before he returned to the forge to keep crafting dragonglass weapons to replace the ones that would be damaged or lost by the end of the first shift. Bran longed to tease her. Whatever part of him _was_ Bran could think of a thousand things to say to her, all of which would make her _furious_. Sansa didn’t even notice her sister’s blush and the way she couldn’t keep still—her eyes were busy seeking out every dark-haired northern man, but there were so many of them, and they were so far away, glimpsed only through smoke and flame. Missandei’s vigil was no easier. Grey Worm had been standing at the head of the Unsullied company in front, but they were now mingled with Dothraki and Free Folk and fighters from the Vale. The battle lines had not retained their shape for very long in the chaos.

Bran found another raven, this one spinning above the battle. It was a risk to warg into a creature that was so near to death, but ravens were small and uncomplicated creatures, and he would likely survive even if the raven was killed when he was in it. It was the larger animals that could consume his mind entirely. In the raven, he dove, flying closer, and he wheeled over the fighting. A raven’s eyes were sharper than his own, and he could pick out so many details that the ones on the walls could not. Jon and Robb were fighting side-by-side, with Ghost between them. They fought like they had learned to as boys, when Bran would watch them and envy the years that his big brothers had on him. They fought like a single man, their swords flashing in sequence as they ducked and parried and shoved wights back into the other’s blades. Bran had been standing between them, seeing through Ghost’s eyes as the army of the dead had approached. Hours ago now, it felt like, though it had scarce been one. Jon and Robb had embraced, and they had called each other _brother._ Jon had dropped his hand to Ghost’s head, and Bran had felt _brother_ in that, too.

Then the sun had disappeared, and the storm had started, and now it had all been fighting for so long. Hours passed. Days? Bran was never sure.

Tormund Giantsbane led his Free Folk warriors, and the Dothraki fought beside them with flaming arakhs. The battlefield was littered with the dead. More wights than living men had fallen, but there were still too many wights left. The dragons dove and burned and roared, and each time flame shot from their mouths, it provided Bran with a view of the dead beyond.

He flew over them, to the end of their lines. It was not so many as he had assumed. Not so many as he had feared. It felt wrong. He kept flying. The snow stretched onward, and the clouds covered the moon and shadowed it, but the raven’s eyes could still see what the men could not.

Snow and snow and snow, but then it was broken by wights again. Another army, following on the heels of the first.

The dead were also being sent in waves.

_He’s testing our strength_. Bran went back to his body to deliver the information to Theon, who nodded to Alys Karstark, who headed for the walls to tell Sansa. Theon asked Bran if he needed anything else, but he didn’t, and so he didn’t bother to respond. He found another raven, on the other side of the battlefield, and he went to it.

Brienne of Tarth fought with her back pressed against Jaime Lannister’s. Their swords gleamed brighter than the others, with the flames from the fires around them reflecting off the oddly-tinted Valyrian steel. Brienne’s shouts and grunts of effort carried over the clashing of metal and the screams of dying men, but Jaime Lannister fought silently, his every moment stolen from the Stranger as he struggled to keep up with his left hand. He left his side exposed when he lunged to block a strike that would have taken Brienne unawares. Bran flew down and tore at the face of the wight that would have killed him, and it was all the distraction Jaime needed to strike the creature down.

Another wolf, running through the sentinels. Not Nymeria, but a hulking male wolf who crashed through the trees and set upon another wave of wights waiting near the back. There was a White Walker among them, and it turned its ice blue eyes directly towards Bran before Bran leapt from the wolf’s body, back into another raven in the chaos.

Grey Worm was fighting at the head of a column of Unsullied. The Unsullied had fared worse than the other companies. They were fierce fighters, but the unfettered wildness of the wights had overwhelmed them. Their orderly lines and rigidity had not held up under the first attack, but they had adapted quickly, and they were fighting back. Bran spotted Rhaegal flying above him, darting out of view behind some clouds. He concentrated on the feeling of him, the green dragon’s form, and then he _was_ him. It was so different, flying as a dragon. Rhaegal welcomed him after an initial start of confusion, and Bran was able to control him. The dragon didn’t fly as easily as a raven, but there was so much power in his wings and in his body. Bran the boy used to envy men who could still walk. Men who could fight. Men who were tall and powerful and could swing swords. Now he knew not to envy men. Other men should envy _him_ , for knowing what it was like to fly as a dragon. Even the man they called the Mountain would never understand the kind of power in a dragon’s form.

Bran and Rhaegal dove together, the wind rushing along their scaly skin, and they opened fire on the wights that were crowding the Unsullied. It would give the fighters time to regroup, at least.

Back into a raven, then, and he sailed above. The worst of the storm was fast approaching, but Bran could tell already that the Night King wasn’t on the field yet. Why would he be? He had the numbers, and he hadn’t expected them to be so diligent about burning their bodies as soon as they fell. No doubt he had hoped that he would be able to double or triple the size of his army before it was time to take the walls of Winterfell. Men needed to sleep and eat and rest while his own forces did not. He would wear them down, bit by bit, and then he would have more of an army to march to Kings Landing. From there, it would be everyone. They would cross the narrow sea. They would march onward to the ends of everything, and then the Night King would finally rest, having won the battle against the living. What he would do after that was anyone’s guess. Bran wasn’t sure it mattered.

He went back to himself.

“He isn’t here yet,” he told Theon. “He’s waiting for us to falter.” Theon nodded.

Hours passed. Days. Even Bran couldn’t tell when the sun never rose. He was above them all. Above and between and among. He fought alongside his brothers as Ghost. He ran with the wolves as Nymeria. He flew alongside Daenerys and her dragons as Rhaegal.

He was the raven tracking Sansa as she rushed through the courtyard, her forearms bare and her hands chilled with cooling blood, barking orders to the people who helped her carry another litter in to Sam.

He was the rats running the rafters above the great hall, counting the wounded and seeing the shifts whittle down from three to two.

He was the horses charging out across the snow as the army advanced further. Jorah Mormont was beside him. Jaime Lannister was beside him. Arya was beside him. In and out and in again, and always he came back and found Theon waiting for him, worried.

“The left flank needs reinforcements.”

“Send out the second shift early.”

“The front needs to pull back until Melisandre can get to them. There are too many dead behind them. If he comes now, that whole line will be lost.”

Alys would run, and Sansa would tie a note to a raven’s foot, and Bran would fly it out to Robb or Grey Worm or Brienne.

“Here!” Gilly cried, indicating an empty bed, and Sansa ripped the rough tunic of the wounded man open.

Arya ran to the forge, shouting for another load of arrows. Bran was the cat that scurried between her feet.

“Hold!” Jorah Mormont shouted from the back of his horse that was Bran. The dark stretched out ahead of he and his men, and the sounds of the second army of the dead were moving closer.

Hours. Days. It didn’t matter. The sun was gone for all of it.

“Wake them up!” cried the Blackfish as he climbed down from the walls to join his men. The bell began to ring again. It had already rung six times. Six shifts. How many hours was that? Bran didn’t know. Had he missed any shift changes? He didn’t know that either. Perhaps it was eight. Ten. Two shifts had gradually grown back into three as men with only minor injuries rejoined the fray. Everything was chaos. The companies no longer held. Men came in and then left again when they could find the strength to stand. Men died in their sleep, too exhausted to wake, bleeding silently through bandages they’d tied too hastily on the battlefield.

Grey Worm, dizzied by wind, deep in the storm, spotted the silent white figure that they had all been trained to look for. One of the Walkers, who controlled the wights. He called out to his men. Bran was with him. He saw their spears gleam black against the firelight as they rushed the sentinel, and as they pierced him a dozen times with their dragonglass tips. An entire company of wights fell with it.

Robb and Jon spun around each other. Jon was faster, more graceful, but Robb’s strikes had more power and accuracy. Bran the boy again remembered watching them spar, and it was the same kind of dance as they traded blows with the Walker, who could not hold them both at bay. They batted it about like two cats with a rat between them. Another Walker fell, and its wights with it.

“Hold him steady!” Gilly yelled at Sansa. The raven flapped around the chandelier above. Sansa looked up at him, and she smiled only slightly, and she held the screaming man down as Varys directed another litter to another empty bed. Arya paced outside in the courtyard, bringing supplies to Gendry as he and three other men forged more swords, more spear tips, more of everything. Inside, Sansa threaded her needle with hands that didn’t shake, and it was only after the wound was stitched closed that she trembled.

She and Missandei ran for the gates with the changing of the shifts, darting past soldiers and nurses and porters. She and Jeyne Poole used to run like that when they were girls. Laughing and dancing out of the way as they hurried to the gate to greet their fathers, returning from the hunt. She and Missandei weren’t laughing. They clutched each other at the gates each time they opened.

Grey Worm fell into Missandei’s arms, pulling her into a desperate kiss as she sobbed and cradled his face in her hands. Sansa held Robb close. She hugged Daenerys and kissed her on the top of her head. She flung her arms around Jaime and Brienne and herded them to get stew or pushed them towards a spare cot or bedroll or bed within the castle. She draped blankets over their shoulders on her way by. She led prayers in the great hall with the wounded. Her fingers cramped and froze and ached with the cold as she stitched and stitched, imagining beautiful silk and delicate threads instead of the skin and blood of men.

Arya brought Bran some food from the kitchens.

“When will it be my turn?” she asked.

“Soon,” Bran said, and then he went away again.

Daenerys and her dragons speared through the sky. The last time she had seen her husband, he was being stitched, his arm bleeding and numb. But it was only his left arm, so he would fight. She was thinking of him as she burned the Walker she saw, killing another hundred or so wights.

She could burn them all. If she burned them all, they would not be able to harm him anymore. She rose high in the sky, and she _looked_ , and she spotted another one. Yes. Hope flashed through her. The Walkers. She had to focus on the Walkers.

She saw her own people only fleetingly. Tyrion had given her some wine the last time she saw him. Varys had been stitching Ser Jorah’s face. Missandei had cried as she cleaned Dany’s blood from the spots on her hands where they were cracked and raw from the cold and from clutching Drogon so tightly. Robb had kissed her and held her for a few quiet moments in a back hallway, but then he had been gone again, and even now she didn’t know if he was still alive. She knew nothing but her dragons and the white gleam of another Walker through the snow, and Bran saw her embrace her father’s words with none of his madness inside her.

_Burn them all. Burn them all, and save everyone._

Brienne took a swipe to the leg from a Walker’s sword just before she used her own blade to end its life. The bells rang out, and Jaime was at her side. His hand was on her leg, and her blood oozed from the wound.

“Jaime, it’s fine,” she said, but he shook his head. He wanted to shake her. He wanted to curse her. He wanted to kiss her. He put his maimed arm around her, and he dragged her back inside the walls as the next shift replaced them on the front. Podrick met them at the gate, where Jaime collapsed and was pecked awake by an irate raven who was not done with him yet.

Sansa pulled Jon into her room and held him while he sobbed with fear and relief and exhaustion. Bran did not linger at the window long.

Brienne’s leg was stitched up by a nervous Sam while Jaime berated him and Brienne tried to get them both to relax. Her leg was bare and blood-covered, and Podrick rushed in with a new set of breeches for her, the old ones cut away. Jaime helped her into them, and she didn’t push him away or blush and try to hide herself. They were all too tired for that. It had been days now without sunlight.

Everyone slept in their armor. Some bathed before they slept, but most collapsed in whatever cot would hold them, covered in blood and sweat and grime. Daenerys kissed Robb’s sleeping brow before she had to leave to get back on Drogon; she had shorter sleeping shifts than anyone else, because she was the only one who could ride the dragons. Sansa held Jon as they slept, and when she woke and he was gone, she saw the blood that remained on her sheets, and she wept and tore them off the bed.

Arya kissed Gendry against the forge, and she kissed him harder when he laughed at her fierceness.

Jaime and Brienne slept jammed together in a corner of the library, with three dozen other sleeping men, in a cot that would have better held one. They slept facing each other, holding on to each other, with Brienne’s hand curled around the neck of his armor to keep him close, and her other brushing absently through his hair as she slept. When they woke they simply watched each other, stared at each other, until the bells tolled again.

“I love you,” Grey Worm whispered into Missandei’s hair when he left their bed.

“Please stay safe,” Daenerys begged Robb before she left to mount her dragons again.

“I’ll come back to you,” Jon said as Sansa slept, her fingers curled into fists like she meant to grab and keep him beside her.

Arya left Gendry at the forge to head out with the Blackfish to burn the bodies with a glower in response to his too-deep bow.

Jaime and Brienne went out to fight together.

Bran sat beneath the tree in the godswood. He remembered a proud, stubborn face and her dancing eyes. But Bran was not Bran any longer, and he could not think of Meera Reed.

* * *

Days were passing. The armies were flagging. Daenerys had turned the majority of her attention to the Walkers, because burning the wights didn’t seem to make much of a difference at all; they fell and burned and fell and burned, but more of them came after. Walkers fell, and wights fell with them, but there were always more Walkers behind them, too. Men lost hope easily, and they lost hope quickly, but what else could they do? They kept fighting. The snow fell hard enough to bury the wights and the bodies before they could be burned, and the fighters trod on them as they kept the wights at bay. The Blackfish and the red witch rode out together to uncover and burn the bodies, but the wind raged and made the flames sputter and die as Melisandre began to despair. The storm never lessened.

“Should we call everyone in?” Sansa asked Daenerys once as Daenerys prepared to go back out and fight. She shook her head. She was right, but Bran knew she wondered. How could it end in a victory? How could it _possibly_ end in anything but their destruction? She flew over the battle. Bran flew beside her as Rhaegal. The winds were getting worse. Even the wights got lost in it. Daenerys lit the way with her flames, but their light never lasted long. Robb and Jon panted beside each other in the center of a circle of northmen. Three Walkers surrounded them.

Bran flew, and Daenerys followed, because she had learned by now what it meant when Rhaegal changed direction so suddenly. They blazed through the Walkers together, and thousands of wights fell. Bran could hear the men cheering, but it wasn’t enough. There were still so many.

_What is he doing? What is he waiting for?_

He flew into more ravens. Down below, Jaime Lannister took down a Walker, though he had taken a slash to the side, barely getting out of the way in time. His strength was flagging. Grey Worm and Tormund Giantsbane had joined forces, the Unsullied and the Free Folk protecting the left flank as the Dothraki rode forward and then retreated on the few horses that were left to them to draw the creatures into the range of the powerful Free Folk bows and the far-flung Unsullied spears. It was a strategy that was so far working; they were surrounded by mounds of dead wights.

The red witch rode out to them, the farthest she had gone from the castle. Together they set fire to the wights and the dead that had fallen, and those mounds of corpses burned bright enough and hard enough to combat the winds of the storm. Davos sulked on the walls above, watching the flames grow.

The ravens cawed and dove and drew Bran further into the storm. He could feel the strength of the wind growing. He saw. His eyes were drawn to the Night King in the darkness. One of the Walkers raised a bow on the Night King’s silent orders, and he aimed directly at Bran’s raven.

Bran opened his eyes.

“Get Arya,” he said to Theon. “He’s here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the songs for this chapter are The Untold by Secession Studies and Northern Lights by Julian Cisneros


	65. Brienne IX

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fighters move to intercept the Night King

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alright buckos strap in bc I'm posting 3 chapters at once

The muscles in her legs burned as she and Jaime at last crested the first rise of the ridge. There were trees here once, Brienne remembered, but they had been cut down in the days before the fighting began, and now they were stumps that jutted up through the snow and made walking treacherous. The new snow was always falling fast, more of it every time she came back out from the too few hours of rest that had been granted, and though the heat from the flames kept most of it low enough to navigate, there hadn’t been much fighting on this ridge, so far from the castle walls.

Not yet, anyway.

She and Jaime picked their way carefully through the white. She could feel a wet patch on her thigh, and she knew that the stitches on her leg had opened again. She gritted her teeth and kept walking. She could not let Jaime see. He tried to get her to turn back once already, when she took a dagger to the side of her neck. A graze. Nothing more. She had allowed him to wrap it in a scrap of deep blue fabric that was somehow still mostly clean, torn from his shirt, but she would not allow him to force her back towards the castle. This was their last stand, and she would be with her king.

Robb was up ahead, and they spotted each other at the same instant through the snow. His face fell open into a relief that was almost childlike. He reached for her, braced himself against her arm as if to confirm that it was truly her. He hugged her, then. She could feel the same exhaustion in him that was also in her. His hair was hard, crusted over. His curls smelled of blood.

“You’re here,” he said.

The last time she saw him…it may have been days ago. They must have been switching shifts. Or perhaps they had simply crossed paths on the battlefield. She hardly knew. All she had known for so long now was fighting and sleeping. She thought Highgarden was hard, but Highgarden had been _nothing_ compared to this. The constant, dragging despair. The unending exhaustion. Nothing existed except for the fight, but sometimes it was hard to remember why they were bothering. Sometimes she woke and wondered if it would be better to stay in bed and let the Night King take what he wanted.

She and Jaime had been raised from their cot in the libary only an hour ago, sent back out into the snow. How long had they been asleep before that? It was impossible to say when the sun never rose, but it didn’t feel like any time at all.

“He’s coming,” Arya had said. She had pointed out the library window to the distant ridge where Robb hoped to intercept the creature and stop his advance. Jaime had looked at her, and he’d had lines on his face from the fabric of the pillow they had been sharing, and he had looked…

_Tired._ He hadn’t looked anything but tired for days, now. Or whatever passed for days when the sun stayed hidden. Whenever the bells rang across the fields, calling them back to Winterfell’s walls as the refreshed troops took their places on the front lines, he scarcely made it to their cot before collapsing and pulling her close, like her nearness and those scant few hours of sleep were the only things keeping him going. On the battlefield, he fought fiercer than anyone, but that could only last so long. Eventually the exhaustion would make him sloppy, and then he would be dead, and there would be no one to sleep beside her anymore.

She turned to look at him, knowing he would be just behind her, as he always was when they left Winterfell and headed back into the fight. He looked ragged, worn out. He was already breathing hard. She tried to pretend she wasn’t worried for him. He had been pressing his new steel hand against his side, earlier, after he had taken down the wight that nearly cut her throat. In the flickering firelight from the breath of the dragons, his face was windburned. Lined with age and fatigue.

“I’m too old for so much fighting,” he had joked weakly, before they fell asleep last time. He always found a few words to whisper before they slept. Like he needed to say _something_ to remind her and himself that they were still alive. They weren’t wights, fighting mindlessly. They were Jaime Lannister and Brienne of Tarth, and they fought together so they could live _._ There were soldiers asleep all around them on bedrolls and pallets. One of them had offered another bed to Brienne, but she refused it, preferring to lie close with Jaime in the dark. No one cared about propriety any longer. Soldiers wept openly in the arms of other soldiers, in the arms of the nurses and servants who had bravely chosen to remain. Lovers or not, it never mattered. There were so few hours to take comfort. Everyone found it where they could. Jaime’s lips had tickled her cheek when he spoke, and she took _her_ comfort from that, and from the press of his stump against her neck, where he could feel her pulse pounding. Before, she would have worried what he would read in her quickened heart, but it didn’t matter anymore. He needed to know she was alive. She understood. She kept her fingers wrapped around the neck of his armor, and her knuckles grazed the skin of his throat so that she could feel him breathe and shiver from the contact.

“You’re not too old,” she had replied. She had brushed his hair aside with fingers that were clumsy with exhaustion and inexperience, and she had caught his eyes glittering wetly in the dark. “You’re not.” But she worried. He stood there on that ridge looking not at all like the golden god she had once thought him. He looked like a man. A mortal man, with mortal failings, who could die so easily. She had nearly killed him herself. Hundreds and thousands of wights. One of them would succeed eventually.

The days and hours blurred together, and now there was nothing but despair. Everywhere she walked in Winterfell, she passed men weeping. They held each other in corners and hallways and over what few meals they had time and energy to eat. Lady Sansa held firm, as did the other ladies; she and Missandei and Gilly were a formidable team that had turned the great hall into an efficient infirmary. Their hands were always red with blood, and they were always steady with a kind of resolve that Brienne admired and envied. Lyanna Mormont and Arya ranged out to join the fighting, though Arya was more often needed back at Winterfell so she could lead the final push when Bran gave the signal. But when they were alone, when there were no fighters watching them, they all crumpled under the weight of it, having to pretend to remain strong in the face of the exhaustion and the despair that had settled over everyone.

_How can we possibly win?_ Brienne wondered it constantly. Jaime wondered, too. She could see it in the way he watched her. She had seen that hopelessness in his expression before, at Highgarden. It terrified her to see it again now.

Jon stood off to the side, staring ahead, into the blinding snow. His face sported a new cut that sliced across his cheek, down from his eye. It bled in drops that must have been maddening, but Jon hardly seemed to notice. Robb’s blood was dripping from his left arm again; she wasn’t the only one who had torn Sansa’s careful stitches. Jaime still held on to his side, and he was limping for some reason she couldn’t see. Brienne’s leg was bleeding, and her neck. There were others around them. Jorah Mormont. Sandor Clegane. The Blackfish. Most of them had the same kinds of injuries. None of them were unbloodied. None of them were at full strength. And yet they had been judged to be the finest fighters in the realm. They were the ones who would take on the responsibility of destroying the Night King. Saving _everyone_.

_They don’t need to sleep. They don’t need to eat. They only want to kill us. That’s all they hunger for. How could we possibly stand against them?_

Brienne found herself leaning into Jaime, who braced his steel hand against her shoulder. They breathed together, linked together, and she took her strength from him, as she had been doing these past days. She should have been grateful for the short rest, but instead she felt anxious to start moving again. _Stopping_ was the dangerous part. That was when her blood cooled and the exhaustion set in again.

“There,” Robb said, pointing. Arya was scrambling up the ridge that Jaime and Brienne had just climbed. There were no dead up here for the time being, but they were never very far. Daenerys flew overhead, and her dragons let loose another torrent of flames at the back of the army. Brienne watched, distracted from Arya’s approach by the sight of all those wights lighting up, the horrifying scope of their army briefly visible through the snow. The Hound caught her eyes, and he looked more drawn and haunted than ever with the flames reflected in his eyes.

It was endless. It went on forever. They were never going to win.

“Come on,” Jaime said, seeing her eyeline. “Don’t be like that. You’re supposed to be the stubbornly naive one, Ser Brienne.” He smiled at her, but he could not hide the desperation behind his eyes.

_If I had killed him at Highgarden_ , she thought. _How would I have survived this?_

_If I had killed him at Highgarden, he wouldn’t have to endure any of this._

She banished her thoughts. She pressed her forehead momentarily against his temple in exhausted acknowledgement, and he looked up at her. His eyes shone.

“It’s there,” Arya was saying. She was drawing in the snow with the point of her sword. Jon was frowning at the map in naked confusion, but Robb seemed to understand. He drew his own line through the snow with the tip of a gloved finger, and Arya nodded. Her thin blade was already bloodied, and she was fairly vibrating with excitement. Gendry had come with her, and he stood with his arms crossed over his chest, and he made Brienne think of how much simpler life was when she thought she was in love with Renly. Just an ugly girl who knew too little of war.

“We have to go to him,” Robb said. “On the attack. If he surprises us, he’ll be able to overcome us. We can’t keep doing this for much longer. The lines will break soon, and then…”

“We can’t let that happen,” Arya agreed. “Sansa and Missandei are getting everyone to the crypts, just in case. But…”

“We can’t lose Winterfell,” said The Hound, staggering up behind Arya, breathing heavily. There was a light sheen of sweat on his brow despite the cold. Everywhere he turned, there were flames, and yet he fought onward. Thoros of Myr died in the first attack, and Beric Dondarrion perished in the effort of killing three Walkers who faced down his flaming sword, saving she and Jaime and The Hound and Arya, days ago now. Yet The Hound continued.

Brienne felt a kinship with him at times, and she felt it now; their shared ugliness had also, apparently, brought to them a kind of shared resignation. They did not know how to do anything but keep going. It never would have occurred to either of them to give up. Not until they were physically unable to keep rising.

“We can’t lose Winterfell,” Robb agreed. His voice was frayed and hoarse from days of shouting orders and fighting and too little sleep. Brienne felt a pang of longing for him to be safe. She wanted to protect him. Had she failed Lady Catelyn by exposing her children to this? Should she have prevented his somehow? “If we lose Winterfell, we lose Bran, and we don’t know what…”

“We won’t,” Jon insisted. He gripped his brother’s shoulder, and he shook it slightly. “We won’t lose any of them. We can end this _now._ Let’s go.”

He pulled Robb forward, up to the path that would lead them to the second rise of the ridge. Arya fell into step beside them, with Gendry and Jorah close behind. Jaime looked at Brienne, and she looked back at him. The Hound pushed past them. The Blackfish, too. Brienne knew they should follow, but she could not make herself break eye contact with Jaime.

“One last stand,” he said. He sounded so defeated. He looked so tired. _Please_ , she thought. _Just let him take himself back inside. Let him be safe. Let him guard Sansa. I should have asked him to. Let him do anything but die here beside me._

“Jaime,” she started.

“Not much longer now,” he said. He took a step back from her, flashing another of those crooked grins that didn’t reach his eyes. He took several limping steps away, after the others, turning his back on her. She grabbed him by the shoulder. She stopped him.

She remembered nothing but cold wind and snow and the heat of the flames from the dragons’ breath. She remembered nothing but the taste of smoke and the smell of blood and the way he felt, trembling from exhaustion in her arms when they slept. She had forgotten Highgarden. She had forgotten Cersei. She had forgotten every reason that used to be piled at the front of her mind, telling her that she could not reply to his misguided declarations of love.

She grabbed him by the collar of his armor. She pulled him in. His eyes were wide with surprise, made molten by the reflection of the flames.

She kissed him.

It wasn’t a gentle kiss. She’d wanted her first kiss to be a gentle one, once, but it didn’t feel like there was time for that now. She kissed him desperately, instead. He was stunned, frozen, but then he surged, his maimed arm wrapping around her neck, hooking his elbow over it so that he could pull himself up on tired toes to draw level with her.

His response was violent, needy. He made a soft, shocked sound into her mouth, and it was all she could do to keep up. Like that fight on the bridge, their swords meeting and their blood singing. She had fought her best, and still he had nearly bested her.

He nearly bested her in his kiss, too. He pushed against her, nearly overbalancing her, and she had to break the kiss to take in a gasping breath, because she suddenly felt like an enormous fool for having done it at all. The others were still striding away. No one had turned to see them, thank the gods.

They were going to die. They were going to die, but she had been kissed. She had been kissed by Jaime Lannister, by the man she loved.

It was not enough. She wanted more and more, and kissing him had been a mistake, because now he would die, or she would die, or the wars would end and he would go back to his sister.

_Shut up,_ she told herself. _Shut up._

He sighed happily as he rested his forehead against hers. He pulled back just enough so he could stare into her eyes.

They had done this at Highgarden, too, she remembered.

“Brienne,” he said.

“I love you,” she blurted.

“Of course you do,” he replied. He laughed, but it was too brittle, and his eyes still gleamed. He kissed her again.

This time, it _was_ gentle. Soft. It held a promise in it. _More_ , it promised. _There will be more of this, if only we survive the night._

_I love you,_ she thought. _I love you._ She looked into his eyes. She looked away again. She looked ahead. It wouldn’t take them very long to catch up to the others. Jaime was releasing her reluctantly, understanding that they had to go, but he _wanted_ to kiss her again. She had forgotten that she didn’t believe him. She had forgotten that she used to doubt him. They held each other every night, so close that there was no room between them for the doubts she used to spread around her like a shield. _Of course he loves me._

She couldn’t remember the last time she had prayed. She prayed then, to whichever of the gods were listening. _Just let us survive. Let us live past this. Even if he doesn’t love me. Even if this doesn’t last. Even if he_ does _go back to his sister. I just want him to live, please. I want us_ both _to live._

They continued after the others without a word. She didn’t look at him. She couldn’t. She had kissed him. Her lips tingled. He hadn’t tasted like much of anything, she didn’t think, but it felt like he had left a permanent imprint on her lips. _Jaime_ , she thought. His name a beacon through the storm. She remembered the suddenness of the terror of seeing him on their last battlefield. The way he had stared at Robb through the smoke. The moment she knew she was going to have to stop him. She had thought his name then, too. _Jaime._ Simple and despairing. She had not known what else to do. Now, it was soft. _Jaime. Jaime. I kissed him._

Ahead, Robb and Jon reached the top of the second rise, and they engaged a Walker that appeared over it. Arya darted along to take out a group of wights threatening The Hound. Brienne’s legs suddenly found power, and her arms found the strength she needed to draw her sword and shout the charge. She spun into the fight, joining Arya and then heading to the Walker that threatened Robb. Her arms burned with the effort. Her every muscle protested her every movement. She was so tired. She was so _finished_. Jaime followed her.

It became a dance again. A dance to which she had long ago memorized the steps. The wights were fast and savage, but they had no real skill among them, and they fell easily into all of the traps that she and Jaime and Robb and Jon laid out for them. The wights fell as Arya and the others fought them off, but the Walker was more difficult. It reacted to things. It fought back more effectively than the wights did. Brienne’s muscles took over. Years of drills and learning how to fight as effectively as any man had given her a confidence in her own body that she had never had outside a training ground, and those motions were pure instinct. The three men with her were the same. Robb and Jon and Jaime had all likewise been raised with swords in their hands, and though Jaime lagged behind the others now, he still deserved a spot among them, and he held his own in the circle, deflecting the Walker’s blade to the side and allowing Brienne to make the final thrust. The Walker died, and the wights died with it.

Then it was three Walkers, silent, appearing through the snow. The wights who were connected to them must have been down on the battlefield below, because it was only them, three sentinels cresting the ridge. Brienne’s stomach was in knots. Were they with _him_? Was _he_ behind them?

“Quickly!” Robb yelled, and she understood; they could not fight all three Walkers _and_ the Night King at the same time. Robb swung wildly at one, and Jaime helped him, catching the Walker’s sword with his steel hand and cutting off its entire arm with Widows Wail so that Robb could take its head. Arya swiped low at the second with her dagger, and its leg crumbled. Brienne hacked at it until it was done. 

Ser Jorah Mormont took a deep slice in the chest from the third.

The dragons roared as they swept in, bursting from the clouds, all three of them opening their mouths and spewing flames onto the top of the ridge above, narrowly missing everyone on the second rise. Sandor yelled behind her, cursing the dragon queen’s nearness. Jorah looked up, watched the dragons wheel through the sky as he stumbled along. Jaime went stiff. He stared at the burning wights ahead of them, but Brienne shouted his name, and he came back to himself. She fought forward. She had to reach the third Walker. It was going for The Blackfish now, and Robb behind him.

Behind them, though. Arya shouted. Brienne turned, and she saw the wights scrambling over the edge of the cliff from the battlefield below, pulling themselves up in a wave of limbs, fingers scrabbling, mouths gnashing. Sandor swore and swung down, hacking at grasping hands and arms, kicking their faces back over, but it wasn’t enough. They were too fast, and the human fighters too tired. The wights swarmed them. Sandor stomped one with his boot and was nearly torn over the edge by the others. Jaime and Jon fought back-to-back to get to Arya. Brienne fell back with Robb and The Blackfish, and together they finished off the final Walker. The wights kept coming. Sandor grabbed Arya and hauled her up past the rocks, toward Robb and The Blackfish, and then he clambered up after her. Jon and Jaime were going the long way around, the gentler rise, too tired and too one-handed to climb the quicker route. Brienne waited at the top, breathing hard, watching anxiously as the wights followed them. Jon passed her, clapped her on the back. Jaime grinned at her breathlessly. He looked a little less hollow than he had. The fighting had gotten his blood back up. She was glad.

A weight, then, on her back. A wight. It landed on her from above, from the top of the ridge, and she felt her boots sliding towards the edge, through snow that was too slippery to fight against. She couldn’t stop herself. Her feet hit a stump in the snow and she tumbled, fell down the rocky edge. The momentum took her halfway back down the second rise before she could grab a crop of rocks to stop herself. She was on her back. The wight landed a few feet away, rolling off her and then back to its feet. She tried to stand, but it was faster than her, and it was on her. Jaime’s voice, hoarse, far away, was shouting her name. Her breath was louder as she fought. Louder than any other sound. The dragons in the distance. The wind from the storm. The sounds of swords clashing as the party engaged the wights that had followed them. Brienne’s wight was not easily dislodged. It scrabbled at her face. Its fingers tore at her. Teeth bit into the flesh of her cheek. She was beating at it with her fists. Where was her sword? She had dropped it. She needed it.

“Brienne!” Jaime screamed, and then the wight was gone. Jaime divested the creature of his head, and then he pulled her up. He dropped his sword, too. The wights around them had fallen; someone had killed their Walker at last. His steel hand was cold against her cheek as it and his gloved hand held her head steady. His eyes were wide and panicked, but Brienne pulled away, and she avoided them.

_It bit me. It ate my cheek._ She could feel the blood, and she knew it would be horrible to look at. It didn’t matter. It hurt so badly, but it was quickly growing numb from the cold.

Jaime’s face was stricken, and she wanted to laugh at him. _What_? she wanted to ask. _I suppose I’m no longer beautiful._

One of the dragons roared above. Jaime reached for her again, but they had fallen behind, and they needed to get to the top of the final ridge. Bran had told them, and Arya had showed them, and now Robb would lead them. The battle was almost over, for good or for ill. She pushed Jaime’s arm away, and she shook her head.

“You need to fall back!” he cried. She pushed him away again when he tried to stop her. Oathkeeper and Widows Wail both were lying in the snow. She picked Oathkeeper up, and it caught the light from the fires.

“We need to finish this,” she said. Her voice felt labored, and she could feel the painful pull of her injury when she spoke. Jaime hesitated, and his eyes lingered too long on her wound, but he nodded eventually, and he picked up his own blade. It glowed, too.

_I love him,_ she thought. Her cheek throbbed. _I love him. Please. Just let him live._

It could not, and did not, matter what happened to them after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the songs for this chapter are Leaving the Old World by Bytheway-May and Wake Your Soul by The Hope Arsenal


	66. Sansa XII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa and Missandei prepare the evacuation

The walls of Winterfell were packed with people taking a final glimpse at the fighting before their evacuation through the crypts. The Blackfish had judged it time before he had headed out to join the others, and Sansa had been organizing it since. She climbed up to the battlements once the exodus had begun in earnest, giving herself some time to rest.

_Rest._ It didn’t feel like rest. It felt like watching the end of the world. The front lines had advanced so far into the storm that she couldn’t see them at all through the smoke. The remains of the last shift were dragging in the wounded, weaving between the ash piles left behind by those who had burned the bodies. There were loose horses everywhere she looked, and ravens pecked at the few bodies that were still whole enough to pry flesh from. Blood and charred remains littered the new snow. Arya had pointed out the ridge where the Night King would make his approach, according to Bran, but Sansa could hardly see it now. The wind and snow and smoke were all impenetrable.

Around her were nurses and servants and the wounded who were well enough to evacuate. Many of them still had loved ones in the fight, and they lingered, watching, hoping for a sign. Those who headed for the crypts did so reluctantly. Everyone knew that if the battle was lost, there was nowhere to truly run, but it was an instinct to flee. Sansa understood why many of them went.

She wouldn’t be going with them.

Melisandre, the red witch, stood below in the courtyard, preparing to ride out again. After the tenth or twelfth time she had ridden out into danger to burn the bodies and prevent the possibility of the Night King raising them again, Davos had relented and allowed her back inside the walls for some rest and some broth. She looked exhausted now, but still determined. She exchanged long glances with Davos every time she came back in.

He hated her. Sansa understood it, because she knew what the red woman had done, but old grudges and old horrors didn’t mean what they used to. Not for anyone. Sansa was guarded by Lannister men, and Targaryen men, and men from the Riverlands and men from across the Narrow Sea. They were all fighting and dying together. Houses and sigils and bloodlines meant nothing when you were fighting against the end of the world.

Missandei pulled Sansa’s hand to catch her attention, pointing above. The dragons had turned sharply, heading towards the ridge, as if they had spotted something. Tyrion shouted her name from below, and she turned reluctantly to look, still clinging to Missandei’s fingers.

“The crypts, Lady Sansa,” he yelled to her. “You _must_ come down to the crypts.”

“My people are still up here,” Sansa shouted back. Loud, because she _wanted_ them to hear her. She remembered the praying and the crying at the Battle of Blackwater. She remembered everyone’s eyes on Cersei and how poor a job Cersei had done in keeping them calm. “I must remain with them.”

Her people were evacuating. Her people were hiding in the crypts to _begin_ evacuating. But there were those who could not remove themselves, and she would not leave them. She had told Jon before, and it remained true: she didn’t want to run. There was no point in running. Running would just be terror, and it would be knowing that her family was dead, and it would be fruitless. The dead would hunt them down and kill them. At least if she died here, she would die with the people she loved.

She had a small dagger in her possession, which Arya had taught her to use but she knew that it and she would not be much use against the dead. Arya had showed her, too, the best place to stab a man’s neck to kill him. She had looked in pain when she said it.

“Right here,” she had said, pressing Sansa’s fingers to her neck, and then pressing her own to Sansa’s. Her fingers had dug in, like she meant to leave a bruise. Her eyes had been locked on Sansa’s. “Right here, and it won’t hurt more than pricking your finger with a needle. There will be a lot of blood, but it’ll be faster that way. Do you understand?”

Of course Sansa had understood. She had nodded, and she had thanked her sister, and she clutched at her pocket constantly to make sure that the dagger was still in there. She would do it if she had to.

Tyrion’s expression was longing and damning all at once as he gazed up at her, but he blessedly left her alone. He said something aside to Podrick, who had been running to the gates to escort more wounded, and Podrick nodded. Sansa sighed, though she didn’t mind his presence, and she knew that he would be glad to shadow her. It was what Brienne had originally wanted him to do, before Sansa convinced him he would be more use elsewhere. 

She turned back around to watch the dragons as Podrick made his way up the steps to join her. Missandei was pressed up against the stone, straining to see the ridge where Arya and the others had disappeared. Grey Worm, Sansa knew, was still below with the rest of the Unsullied, holding back the wights. Or that was where he was headed hours ago, anyway. He could be dead by now. Jon, Arya, Robb. They could all be dead, too.

“I saw something,” Missandei said. “On the ridge up there. A flash of light.”

“Where?” Sansa asked. Missandei leaned in towards Sansa to point.

Much closer, almost immediately above them, the low clouds broke.

Both women looked up. A dark shape hurtled down from the sky, twisting and writhing in the air, torn wings beating fruitlessly and failing. 

A dragon, falling. Spewing fire as it fell. It was roaring, but it had a high-pitched, uneasy quality to it. Nothing like its usual roar.

_It’s dying_ , Sansa had time to think.

“Get down!” Podrick shouted, his hand suddenly on the shoulders of both women, pulling them behind the wall and covering them as best he could, crowding them against the stone. Sansa’s throat closed with fear. There were screams and shouts from the watchers on the wall, but neither Sansa nor Missandei made much of a sound. Missandei gasped, and Sansa pressed her lips together into a rigid line as they huddled there, the three of them in an awkward, jumbled hug. The dragon hit the ground just outside the walls, and all of Winterfell shook with it. The flames arched overhead, above the walls, and for a moment everything was _heat_. Sansa thought fleetingly of the rabid fear in The Hound’s eyes the night of the Battle of Blackwater, and she understood. Gods, she understood. Her own eyes were closed, and she could feel Missandei’s breath speed up against her neck.

It was over in an instant, but it seemed like so much longer. The walls held. The flames died. The dragon was still. Podrick was holding on to her shoulder, crouched behind her, and Missandei was clutching her hand. Sansa could feel both of them, but the rest of her was numb, confused. She only then felt afraid, and she knew that her legs would start to shake when she stood.

She didn’t stand. She couldn’t move.

_Get up, Sansa. Stop being such a stupid little girl._ Nothing happened.

_Your people need to see you being brave. Would mother stay hidden? Would father cower behind the wall?_

She forced herself to stand. She shook. She loathed herself for her weakness. Missandei pulled her closer. They leaned together in the crenel in front of them to look. The cloud of smoke was thick, and Sansa’s eyes stung from it. Smoke and snow and ash all swirled together, but at the center of it was a dragon. Its eye was open, trained on them, but it didn’t move, and the dragon wasn’t breathing. Missandei let out a soft gasp that seemed to echo above all the other noise. Even the battle seemed quieter than it had been. Had they all seen? Had they all watched the dragon fall? Hours and days of fighting, and now a dragon was dead. What had killed it? What could kill a _dragon_? Was it _him_? Jon said the Night King was powerful, but a _dragon_?

Her family was out there, trying to kill him. How could they possibly win against a creature that had killed a dragon?

“Is it Drogon?” she asked in a weak, reedy voice that hardly sounded like herself. She couldn’t see any sign of Daenerys. Her eyes stung, and still she leaned out further, clutching the stone for balance, trying to spot any sign of her good-sister’s white-blonde hair. The dragon was covered in snow and ash and soot, and Sansa had avoided looking at the dragons too closely. She didn’t know enough of their differences by sight. She didn’t see white hair or the white fur coat she had sewed for Daenerys, but that didn’t mean anything.

Daenerys could have fallen somewhere else. She could have been under the dragon. The thought of losing her, of losing control of the dragons in the middle of the battle, of losing the good-sister who had only just joined the family…

“No, look!” Missandei cried. Her face was open, a relieved smile breaking across it. Tears shone on her face. The great black dragon swooped overhead, and Sansa could see Daenerys on its back. She was still safe. The smoke and snow settled, and Sansa could see that the dead dragon was the smaller one, the lighter-colored one. A gigantic spear was lodged in one of its eyes. Sansa had watched the Unsullied training for days as they prepared for the arrival of the army of the dead. Their spears had seemed enormous to her, and she had marveled that men who looked so slight could so easily wield them and spin them and fight so amazingly with them. _This_ spear made theirs look no bigger than Arya’s Little Flame.

Daenerys flew back up into the clouds, out of sight. Podrick was still behind Sansa. His forehead sported a new cut on it, and he kept wiping at the blood. Damage from the wall when the dragon fell.

“Please, my lady,” he said. “We should all be in the crypts. _Please_. We have to go.”

He was right, of course. It would be safer to abandon the castle now. Take the tunnel in the crypts out to the other side. There were horses and carts and supplies waiting for them there, to take them to White Harbor, where they could take ships and go anywhere. Somewhere warm. Somewhere not yet touched by the dead. He was right. It was one choice ahead of her.

It didn’t feel like one. It was impossible to imagine. Going down into the earth, past those stony-faced Stark kings. Past Aunt Lyanna, her expression frozen and peaceful, mournful. Past the statue of her father, who would not judge her for fleeing. Past the crumbling statues that always made Sansa think of maimed ghosts. Down into the tunnel, through the dark earth, with the wriggling earthworms and the smell of ancient mold. Then leaving, boarding a cart with the others and _leaving_ , not knowing what was happening to her family. Leaving the wounded soldiers who could not be moved. Leaving the armies. Leaving everyone behind.

Some of the nurses would follow, but not all of them. She knew this already. They would stay behind and tend the wounded until they themselves were overrun. It was impossible to imagine abandoning them, too.

It would be the smart thing to run. To stay alive as long as possible.

Lord Baelish would have run. And he would have cautioned her to run, too.

No, that wasn’t quite right. Lord Baelish would have evacuated with the rest, days ago. He never would have been here for the battle.

But she wasn’t Petyr Baelish, and she didn’t want to be. It wasn’t a choice at all. She didn’t want to leave her family. She didn’t want to die beneath the earth, or in a cart trundling too slowly away from the chaos. She looked out over the walls again. On the right, the lines of the army had completely crumbled. The wights were coming, scrambling over the dead. What was left of the flank was retreating, back towards the walls, losing all the ground that had been gained. There weren’t enough of them left. Men were leaving through the gates already to bolster them, but they were tired men, men who had been fighting for days and weeks and _years_ , it seemed sometimes. They would not be enough.

The castle would fall. It seemed inevitable now. Melisandre was riding back in, her white horse and red hair a beacon through the dark. She was shouting something to the retreating men, urging them faster.

Sansa allowed Podrick to pull her. She pulled Missandei along.

“Sansa!” Tyrion yelled, still standing in the courtyard below. Davos was with him. Sansa looked at her brother’s Hand, and she saw his concern, and she saw the wild fear in his eyes, and she knew it was the same that would be in hers. Tyrion’s expression was the same. But she couldn’t. This wasn’t their home. This wasn’t their castle. Tyrion’s brother was out there. His queen. He understood some of it. But these were her _people_. She had a responsibility to them. Her parents had taught her that. Her parents and Robb, and the way he was when he came back, and the way he always tried to do right by them after having wronged them so completely. No, she couldn’t go.

“I can’t,” she said. “I won’t leave them. Missandei, Podrick, you…”

“I’m staying,” Missandei said. For all her sweetness and her polite smiles, she was strong as steel now, and Sansa nodded, and she clutched Missandei’s gloved hand tighter in thanks and in understanding.

“I’m not going anywhere without you,” Podrick said stubbornly, and she smiled at him. She wished he would go, but she knew he wouldn’t; Brienne was his family too.

“Lady Sansa, _please_ ,” Tyrion said. He looked up at her. Imploring her. She believed him. He wanted to keep her safe. He felt he owed her that much. But she couldn’t go with him.

“My people are still up here,” she said. “I must be with them.” To Davos, she said, “order the gates closed when the retreat is finished, and then you should go to the crypts with the others.”

“With all due respect, my lady: not a chance,” Davos answered, and he stormed off to the gates.

Missandei was still clinging to her arm, refusing to be separated and taken to the crypts. Tyrion was still beseeching them. Podrick was watching through the gates as the fighters came charging back in. Outside, the dead continued to fight, and the dragons continued to roar. Two of them, now.

Arya had gone out there ages ago. If she was safe, if she had made it to the others, that meant that they were on their way to kill the Night King and end the war for good. Either they would soon be safe, or they would soon all be dead.

Varys finally persuaded Tyrion away, toward the crypts with the other evacuees, to lead them through the tunnel and out to the waiting carts. Lyanna Mormont appeared from within the keep, her shoulders squared. She had taken a swipe to the shoulder early in the fighting, and she had been like a caged shadowcat ever since, prowling the halls and hissing at anyone who got in her way. She was usually found at the top of one of the towers, shouting down updates about the battle and wishing loudly that she was back out there. Sansa was relieved, in truth, that she had been taken out of the battle so early. She was a fierce girl, but she was still so young, and Sansa’s heart had squeezed painfully each time she saw her riding out with Jorah and the rest of the Mormont men.

“Don’t even think about trying to order me away,” she said when she saw Sansa walking towards her.

“I know better than to try, Lady Mormont.”

They marched back inside the Great Hall. Many of the wounded were sitting up in their beds, hearing the panic from outside. Sansa stood for a moment in the entryway. There were northmen, Vale men, men from Riverrun. Free Folk men. There were men in Lannister armor, and men who came from Dorne. Dothraki warriors and Unsullied fighters. Ironborn who fought on the front lines with Yara Greyjoy and Highgarden men who fought for Olenna Tyrell. There were men who flew no banners and wore no sigils. From Flea Bottom, like Arya’s friend. Low-born men who had wandered from wherever they had been in the world because they believed in the threat.

There were women, too. Not as many, it was true, but she recognized wounded women of Bear Island and the land beyond the wall. Ironborn women and women from Dorne. Warrior maidens who had fought as fierce as men and who had been injured as badly as men, too.

They were all too hurt to move. All too injured. They would never make it through the crypts. When the castle fell, they would die.

All of them looked to her.

She could feel Lyanna and Podrick at her back. Missandei stood beside her. Outside, Robb led the charge while his wife flew above the battle. Arya had gone to him to lead him to the Night King. Bran and Theon were cloistered away in the godswood. Brienne and Jaime were on the front lines with The Hound and The Blackfish. And Jon…

She could not think of Jon.

_When I am queen, I will make them love me._ She remembered thinking that once, as a child. She remembered being afraid, and finding that Cersei could not offer her comfort. The queen had been despairing herself as the battle raged closer and closer, and she did not notice that the eyes of the other women were on her. Well, Sansa wasn’t a queen, but she knew that her people loved her, and she knew that she would do whatever she could to help them in these final moments.

“Bar the doors,” she said quietly to the guards on either side of her. They hurried to comply. She removed her cloak and her gloves, and she dropped them onto one of the long benches along the back wall. She heard from the rustling of cloth that Missandei was doing the same. Lyanna was already stalking away, heading deeper into the keep, shouting something about keeping an eye on things from one of the windows upstairs. Guards and some of the wounded followed her, carrying bows and quivers and cauldrons of pitch prepared in the kitchens. It wouldn’t be enough. It wouldn’t hold them off for long.

_The wights will come over the walls,_ Sansa thought. _They will get past the guards. They will get past the doors. They will take Winterfell._

_Jon promised. If they got past, it means…_

_Jon is still alive. He_ must _still be alive._

She moved between the rows of cots with Missandei beside her. They offered water. They offered prayers. They offered words of comfort. The nurses began their work again, following the example of Sansa and Missandei, who kept firm and steady. The dagger was a weight in Sansa’s pocket. Should she kill this man? Should she kill this woman? Could she slide her dagger into their necks and end their suffering before the wights came? Missandei translated her words to a wounded Dothraki man who stared up at them, eyes shaded with pain. If she killed him, would it be a blessing? Wasn’t mercy worth more than words? _Jon promised me. Arya’s out there. They’ll kill the Night King. Just believe in them for a little longer._ The dagger stayed in her pocket.

Outside in the yard, there was chaos. Shouts and the clash of steel. The bells began to ring, though there were no more shifts, and no more sleeping fighters in the castle. The wights had reached the gates, Sansa knew. They had begun to climb over the walls. She could hear Lyanna Mormont shouting from upstairs, ordering pitch poured over the walls. Sansa spoke louder, and prayed harder. She thought of Cersei, sipping wine and raving as the Blackwater burned. She thought of Elia Martell’s fear as the Lannister men broke into the Red Keep. She thought of her mother watching Robb die, watching her men butchered around her. Afraid. They had all been afraid. Sansa was afraid, too.

Missandei held her hand, and they moved together to the next bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the songs for this chapter are Counting Paths by Matthew and the Atlas and Heart by Blue Stahli


	67. Jaime IX

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They only have to kill one man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

It was difficult to see anything from the top of the ridge where Arya Stark had led them, but it was impossible to miss the dragon’s fall. It broke through the clouds quite close to the castle, and it died with a sound that split the air and echoed across the battlefield.

It rippled, the awareness of it. Jaime could see it on the field below as well as he could see it on the ridge above, where he and the others still fought against the wights. He could see heads turning. He could see areas where the momentary distraction was enough to turn the tide. Wights surging forward, gaining back some of the ground that had been lost. An entire flank began to crumble, and he felt the horror of a man as much as he felt the frustration of a military commander who was not close enough to shout them into compliance.

Robb faltered as he tried to see if the dragon that went down was the one that carried his wife. Jon stared in awe at the sky, where the other two dragons wheeled about to return to their fallen companion. The Hound was shouting something to Jorah Mormont, who had staggered and fallen to his knees for a second time. Arya was making up for their lapses, darting around the battlefield with a spear-like weapon. Robert’s bastard followed after her, that helm unmistakable, bringing Jaime back almost to Pyke, watching Robert cut through the Ironborn, back when he was still capable of wielding anything more than a flagon of ale and his own cock. Brienne shouted something at Robb, bringing Robb back to himself, and the northern king returned to the fight.

Jaime hardly noticed anything. It was only the fighting that mattered.

Everything else was going to utter shit. Why _not_ a dragon?

Brienne turned to shout at him, next. She was facing him, her wound visible. _Ghastly._ Still bleeding, staining her neck red. The bit of his shirt that he had given her for the wound on her throat was sodden with it, blue turning crimson red, and he couldn’t tell if _that_ wound was still bleeding too. He hoped not. He didn’t think so. He wasn’t sure. His stomach squirmed with an unfamiliar anxiety. She needed a maester. She needed someone to stitch her up. He would have been able to do it once, but not with one hand, and not in the middle of battle. He didn’t usually _think_ so much during battles. He certainly didn’t worry so much. His instincts took over, and he fought, and he survived. But all of this felt too precarious, with Brienne bleeding in front of him. _She has to live_. It was a thought that kept pushing forward into his mind. _She has to live_. It was the only thing that mattered.

“Jaime! With me!” she screamed at him, and he followed her. Robb and Jon were leading the charge, and Brienne was close behind. Jaime watched her as she struggled ahead through the driving snow.

They reached a dip in the ridge. A small company of fighters waited for them on the other side, having struggled up from the frontlines. There were some Wildlings among them, but mostly it was Lannister men, who greeted him with nods of exhaustion, a glimmer of gladness to see him still alive that he returned.

More wights, from further north. Jaime could make out the cold grey of trees in the distance. The edge of a wood. The snow still swirled around them, but he could see the shapes spilling from between them. And he could hear, wafting over from time to time, howls and shrieks and the clash of swords.

“Wolves,” The Blackfish said to his left, and Jaime looked at him. Brynden Tully was glaring ahead at the trees. “If undead wolves come out of those trees…” He trailed off, grim-faced, and Jaime managed a strangled laugh. The Blackfish glanced at him, and Jaime could remember the way he’d looked at Riverrun, when Jaime was a boy, visiting for a time. He’d seemed impossibly huge and impossibly grown. He’d been patient with Jaime, then. Answering his questions about the battles he’d seen and the men he’d killed. Jaime had been young, and so eager to speak to someone like Brynden Tully. He had ignored Lysa entirely, the girl he was meant to be betrothing. All things considered, it was probably for the best, but he knew it had been ghastly manners.

The next time Jaime had spoken to The Blackfish, he had been called a disappointment. It was a fair assessment at the time. But Brynden didn’t look disappointed now. Maybe Jaime was just hoping for it desperately enough to see it, but he looked almost _impressed_.

“You’ve fought well,” he said. It was spoken harshly, almost apologetically. Annoyed to be saying it. His eyes landed on Jaime’s steel hand, and he nodded to himself. “Better than I expected.”

Jaime had never thought to hear any praise from a man like Brynden Tully. Especially not _now_. Especially not after everything he and his family had done to the Tullys. He nodded in thanks, because he could not make himself say anything. His throat felt thick, clogged. It was difficult to swallow.

“We’re a sorry lot,” Brynden continued. He looked at Jaime, then at Robb, then at Jon and Brienne and all the rest. Taking a moment to breathe before the new wave of wights reached them. His eyes took in bandaged arms and bloodied spots in torn patches of armor and leather. They lingered on Brienne’s face and Jorah's greying skin. Brynden had the same determined set to his shoulders that Robb had, and that Catelyn had had as well. There was some kind of steel in Tully spines that made them all admirable in their own ways. Jaime wished he could have…well. It didn’t matter. It was too late to change things. Too late for anything, really. He watched Brienne as she stood above the others, peering into the distance. The wind blew her hair out of its neat hold, and she looked almost like she had when she had taken him from the Stark camp. Nearly wild. He could feel her lips against his. He thought of how she smiled when he knighted her. How she held fast to him in her sleep. He wished there was more time. “But we’re what they’ve got.” The Blackfish looked at the Lannister men in their Lannister armor, and his jaw tightened, but he didn’t say anything more.

It wasn’t like in the stories. War never was. It didn’t feel grand and important, all of them up on that ridge, waiting for the shape of the Night King to emerge from the trees. It didn’t feel like they were a part of anything except pain and exhaustion and misery. _We’re what they’ve got_ , The Blackfish said, and it wasn’t the kind of thing that a knight would say to his men in one of the songs. It wasn’t an inspiring pre-battle speech. It wasn’t a speech at all. It was a quiet, tired statement. Spoken so only one former enemy could hear. _We’re what they’ve got_. Jaime’s mother used to tell him stories. He hardly remembered them now, except for the feeling. The way his chest would get tight as she whispered lovely tales of heroism and valor and knights saving damsels and fighting evil men. There were always _lessons_ in those tales, and there was always a happy ending. He liked them for that reason. The idea that every bad thing came with its reward at the end.

He wasn’t that child any longer. His mother was long dead, and he had understood knightly valor to be the farce it was for far longer than he had even _known_ her.

But that tightness was back in his chest nonetheless. It wasn’t like in the stories, and it wasn’t like in the songs. But if they succeeded. If they made it. If _anyone_ survived to tell of it. They would be the stories themselves, wouldn’t they? He’d long known that he would have a place in history. A footnote perhaps, but a place nonetheless. The Kingsguard who killed his king. Kingslayer. Oathbreaker. A man who fucked his sister and gave her three bastards. A man who crippled a boy who would go on to do…well. Whatever it was that Bran was going to do as the Three Eyed Raven. Jaime’s entry in the White Book was the least of his problems; history would remember him for his worst deeds. But maybe now. Maybe after this. Maybe there would be more of a story to tell. He rather liked the idea, actually. The confusion people would feel in years to come when they wondered what compelled the Kingslayer to leave his sister and fight the dead. What would an honorless man do at the end of the world? Wouldn’t he stay away? Wouldn’t he have run in the opposite direction?

Brienne turned and looked at him, and he again felt the desperate press of her lips against his, and he again felt her sword sliding into his side, and he felt her heavy weight at his back, keeping him safe. She was magnificent here, made sparkling and silvery by the dwindling moments they had left to them. He wanted to grasp onto them, and grasp onto her. He couldn’t. He could only hope.

The first female knight in Westeros. There would be songs about _her_. Hundreds of them, and tales told to children just like the ones his mother used to tell. She would be remembered. He wondered if they would recall the name of the man who did it. He wondered if the stories would get anything right about his heart.

More wights from below, following the soldiers who were mostly Lannister men. He dove into the fray, and his mind stopped whirling. Brienne was beside him, and then away, and then beside him again. Arya. The Blackfish. Jon and Robb. All of them, all those men and women he’d fought beside for days now, who had been his enemies once. All of it was forgotten.

He clashed with a wight that was wearing Lannister armor.

Lannister armor.

Only the Night King could raise the dead, right? Fuck, he hoped so.

“Robb!” he shouted, as he pushed the wight away. Robb turned and took it in. Jaime gestured to the wight’s armor, and Robb nodded. His grim face grew even more drawn. He turned to Jon to relay the message, and Jaime swung his sword and killed the wight who had been one of his men before this battle began.

The Night King was close. He had to be.

There was a Walker making its way up among the wights. Maybe Walkers could reanimate the dead as well. That would certainly be their luck. Brienne headed straight for it.

Keeping her alive was turning out to be difficult work.

Brienne had kissed him clumsily, but well, and it had brought warmth back into his limbs after days of feeling only frozen terror. Seeing her injured had sapped the heat out again. The way she ignored the wound on her cheek. The way she had ignored the cut to her neck. The way she kept fighting through the pain and the exhaustion, like she intended for it to be the last thing she did. _Please_ , he wanted to say. _Just please let someone else do this._ He knew that she _could_ fight the Walker. It wouldn’t matter how tired she was. It wouldn’t matter that she was so injured. She was one of the finest fighters he had ever met, and there was a good chance that she would succeed.

But they were all running out. Out of time, out of energy, out of luck. Eventually the Stranger would come for her, and Jaime knew he wasn’t strong enough to hold it back forever.

But Jon and Robb reached the Walker before he and Brienne could, and Jaime pulled her away, yanking them into a scrum with wights and The Hound instead. This was easier, automatic, and soon those wights fell and died when Robb drove his sword through the heart of the Walker that was connected to them.

Arya cried out, drawing Jaime’s attention. She was looking through the storm, and Jaime stared, squinting, trying to see what she saw.

Then. _Oh._

Jon had insisted that people would _know_ when they saw the Night King, and Jaime had been quietly irritated by the lack of description and the characteristic dryness of Jon’s irritating Northern humor.

But, seven hells. The boy was right.

The Night King made no sound as he appeared through the mist and snow. He held a long blade that appeared to be carved of ice. Jaime had little hope it would shatter as easily as it looked like it would. How anticlimactic _that_ would be. He held his own sword in his left hand, down by his side. He was more conscious than ever of his missing right. Would he ever get used to it? His instincts still said to take his sword and fight. Every move, every thrust, was still half a second behind because he _still_ always led with his right side.

He would have been able to do it, if he were still whole. He was sure of it.

_It’s just one man. We just have to kill one man._

One man. One creature, at any rate. Man enough to be killable, hopefully.

_If I still had my sword hand…_

He didn’t, though. He had his left, and it was a serviceable hand. He’d killed plenty of wights with his blade in it already. But it would never be his right. Even with only one hand, he still had the skill of sizing up an opponent and understanding their strengths, and he _knew_ that the Night King, with his slow movement and the way he tracked the fights up on the ridge, would be a difficult one.

His missing hand throbbed and burned. His missing fingers tried to clench around the hilt of a blade that was not there to hold. His jaw was tight. His stance widened. It was only one man, and Jaime couldn’t even do _that_.

_One man. Just one man._

The Hound stared down the approaching foe. Arya strode up beside him. The Blackfish gave the creature a thoughtful once-over before turning back to fight the wights that were harassing the Lannister men. Brienne stood straight and tall, a few steps ahead of Jaime, near Robb. Her shoulders were squared. She was watching the Night King, and Jaime could tell from her stance that she would have that battle-ready sneer on her face. She watched it come closer, and Jaime watched her.

They only had to kill one man. What was one man? Jaime had killed hundreds tonight alone. His left hand tightened on the grip of Widows Wail.

Widows Wail. He stared down at his sword. His son’s sword. A monstrous name for a monstrous boy. If Jaime survived tonight, he would change it. Oathkeeper was already taken.

_Honor_ , he thought. He looked at Brienne again. _Maiden’s Honor. Maiden’s Justice._ He thought of the way she’d stared at him in Riverrun. The way she held him on the field outside Highgarden.

_Maiden’s Heart._

The Night King stopped, and he began to raise his arms. Jaime realized suddenly how quiet and still everyone else had gotten, because Jon Snow broke the silence.

“No!” he cried. He was already charging. Robb, surprised, followed a few seconds too late, and was forced to engage with a Walker who stepped smoothly between the northern king and his cousin. Brienne shouted for Jaime and then took off, assuming he would follow. She was right, of course. He already was.

Jon met the Night King, sword ringing against sword. Valyrian steel against ice that somehow, unfortunately, did not shatter. Their blades meeting made a ringing sound that cut through the air like a woman’s scream. _Rhaella_. A closed door and a mad king’s laughter. _Cersei_ , in a bed of blood, crushing the bones of his hand and sobbing as she labored to bring Joffrey into the world. One of the few moments in which she forgot that she was afraid to show him even a scrap of affection. He had been helpless to help both of them, and he felt the same now as he watched Jon and the Night King battling. Jon’s skill, his footwork, his fluid motions. It was like looking back in time to when he was whole, and he wasn’t whole any longer. He was the one who was helpless now.

The Walkers had proven themselves to be worthy fighters, and Jaime supposed it should not have been such a shock to watch the Night King as he proved to be the same. He was not at all like the wights with their panicked, jerky movements and their uncontrolled chaos. The Night King was an intelligent creature that understood how to fight and seemed to guess every move Jon was going to make. Brienne was picking up speed, cutting through wights as she moved towards Jon. Jaime could do nothing but charge after her. To his left, Robb narrowly ducked under a blow from the Walker he fought, and Jaime cursed.

The Stark boy could handle himself. Jaime should leave him to it.

But he peeled off and clashed with the Walker. He saw Catelyn Stark’s eyes and Catelyn Stark’s auburn hair, and he saw the expression on her face when she looked down at him in that cage. He saw her devastation when Bran nearly died for Jaime and Cersei’s secret. He saw her desperation when she had to go against her son to take a _chance_ to save her daughters. He even saw her youthful laughter at Riverrun, when he and the Tully children had adventured in the wood together. He deflected the Walker’s sword. It might have been a killing blow, but it sailed harmlessly over Robb’s head.

“Come now, you can’t tell me you need the cripple to save you,” he called out to Robb, who laughed shakily and blocked another attempted hit. Jaime used the momentum to stab the Walker in the back, and the creature exploded into ice. Robb clapped him on the arm briefly as they headed after Brienne and Jon together.

“It really is your best move,” he said, and Jaime laughed.

Jon and the Night King were still clashing, moving farther back down the ridge, toward the battlefield. Close to the edge, above where Brienne had fallen. Jon’s expression was _hungry_ , almost ravenous. Jaime could see his own thoughts reflected in the boy’s eyes: _one man. I just have to kill one man._

He grew more desperate. His strikes got messier. Jaime felt no real fear for the boy; he could see Jon’s skill in the way he blocked and moved, and he didn’t think Jon would be in any danger before he and Robb and the rest could reach him. But he certainly wasn’t going to _win_. Not alone. The Night King was too aware of him, too skilled and too smart.

“Get down!” Robb shouted suddenly. “Jon!” He put on a burst of speed, his younger legs and seeming endless supply of energy taking him far ahead of Jaime. Jaime had no idea what the Stark boy had seen to cause such a reaction, but Robb ran full-tilt into Jon, and he tackled Jon to the side, a harsh impact made harsher by the sound of their armor meeting. The Night King’s weapon sailed harmlessly over them in a mighty swing, and both boys slid down the ridge in a tangle of limbs just as one of the dragons swooped low and opened fire. The blast hit the Night King directly, and Jaime’s heart leapt. No. It was too easy. It wouldn’t be so easy. But… _please. Let it be over._

The heat from the flames rolled over Jaime as he stared up at the hovering dragon, too close for his comfort. The wind from its wings carried on it a sickly sweet smell he recognized too well. Daenerys was on Drogon’s back, and there was a hatred in her expression that froze him momentarily.

She had never looked so much like her father.

She was helping them. He told that to himself as he scrambled back. _She is not her father_. Wights were not men. The Night King was not a man.

_She burned your men, too. The ones by the wagons. Remember? The soldiers and the camp followers, all burning. Screaming._

He had worried, at the beginning of the battle. When the dragons opened their mouths and cut swaths through the wights, sometimes far too close to the men who were fighting. How would they know? Were they burning men out there, too? He’d forgotten as the hours turned to days and there was still fighting. It was impossible to think of anything but staying alive and making sure that Brienne was alive, too. But now he remembered that fear. He backed up further, watching Daenerys. Seeing Aerys and the gleam of fire in his eyes.

Robb had gotten to his feet and was pushing back up the ridge, staring intently at the flames, at the spot where the Night King had been. Jon staggered after him, exhausted and hopeful. Jaime held off the wights that made to follow, forcing himself to turn his back on Daenerys and the dragon, forcing himself not to watch the endless column of flame. He nearly bumped into Arya as she joined him in the fight, and then the flames were gone, and the wights were still fighting, and Jaime knew. He and Arya killed the last of the wights together, and then they turned at once to see.

The Night King still stood where Jon had left him. He seemed to have been hardly touched by the flames. He was smoldering slightly, his skin charred and his clothing burnt, but still he stood. He drew a long spear from where it was strapped to his back.

“No!” Robb yelled. Daenerys spotted it at the same moment, and she pulled her mount sharply to the right. The javelin sailed past Drogon’s wing. Robb charged, Jon with him. A Walker interceded. More wights and Walkers crested the top by the Night King, and the Night King turned, ignoring all of them, walking through the wights, knowing they would slow the progress of the human fighters. He began to march downward, back towards Winterfell, towards Jaime and the others, unbothered by their presence. He brushed past Robb, ignoring the northern king as Robb battled the Walker. Jon tried to strike at him from behind, but another Walker stopped him. Brienne was taking on two at once, and Jaime could not get to her. The Night King stood between them.

_It’s just one man,_ he thought. _It’s just one man._

“Kingslayer, come on,” Arya snarled, pointing with her sword up at the Night King as it approached. “We can end this.”

Daenerys returned in a rush of wings and wind, and she tried to hit the Night King with another blast of fire, but it was too close to Jaime and Arya, and her aim wasn’t quite perfect. The fire arced through and past the creature, but Daenerys didn’t stick around, continuing to fly up and away, to keep her dragon safe. The Night King barely paused. He kept walking. The snowstorm raged onward, picking up. It would be much harder for Daenerys to make another pass, for all the good that would even do. Maybe if she hit him enough. Maybe it would work eventually. But was it worth risking another dragon?

The wights around the Night King had caught fire, but the fires were going out quickly with the strength of the wind. Arya was still standing just beside him. He couldn’t see Brienne anymore. He couldn’t see anyone. Just Arya at his side, looking smaller and younger than she had seemed before the fight. She was bruised and bloodied like the rest of them, but there was a savagery in her expression that almost looked like enjoyment. She was _him_ , when he was a boy and discovered how well he could fight. She had her sword in one hand and a dagger in the other, and she stood in a stance that spoke of certainty that she could take on all the world with just those two weapons. He remembered.

Arya cast her gaze around in the snow. The sky lit up again, the dragon coming back despite the lack of visibility. Jaime fell back just in time, pulling Arya with him. They turned and found more wights coming at them. Arya yelled something, but he couldn’t hear it over the wind and the dragon’s roar. They struck out together, fighting the wights back. It wasn’t quite the same as fighting alongside Brienne, but Arya was quick, and she darted in and out of the group, taking them out from behind and from among them as Jaime fought them head on.

Time narrowed to the fight. Existence narrowed to this one little plateau on the ridge where he and Arya Stark fought. Cersei had asked him to kill her, once. After her wolf bit Joffrey. He had always been glad he hadn’t done it, but he was especially glad now. Perhaps that was another area where the gods had interceded. Smiled on him for some fucking reason he couldn’t fathom.

Then Robb was there, and The Blackfish, and Jon, and The Hound, and Brienne. The few surviving men in Lannister armor who followed The Blackfish now. All of them bearing down on he and the Stark girl, sweeping the wights away, fighting them back. He tried to find the Night King, but he couldn’t see him.

“We lost him!” Robb was shouting. “In the storm!”

Lost him? _How_? Jaime wanted to laugh, but he didn’t have the energy. He felt a shift in the air behind him. Instinct took over. He spun.

A sword came down and met his steel hand. That horrible screaming sound, a peal, a song. He met the eyes of the creature that held it. The Night King looked back at him.

He shouted out a warning, but it was impossible to say if anyone heard. There were shouts all around, and screams of the Lannister men, and the horrible sounds that the wights made. Jaime blocked a second strike, and then a third, and then Brienne was there beside him, fighting back. The Night King swung at him, evading Brienne’s blows. Jaime scrambled backwards, lost his footing. Something tore in his side. His wound from Brienne, opening further. It had already been reopened during the days of fighting, and now it was again. He could feel blood on his shirt. His new shirt. The shirt that Sansa made him.

Arya flew past him, and she joined Brienne. Their blades flashed against the fires that burned when Daenerys flew Drogn past again. Wights fell all around them as a Walker died. Robb reached under Jaime’s arm and heaved him to his feet, and Jaime staggered forward to engage the Night King again. Robb was at his back, fighting a Walker who tried to intercept. Arya disappeared and then reappeared again, trying to land a blow. The Night King blocked everything they threw at him.

“Winterfell!” The Hound was yelling. Jon turned, crying out in anguish, and Jaime could not help but look. The storm had broken just enough to see. There was a black mass on Winterfell. Like a growth that pulsed and throbbed. Bodies, he realized. The dead were climbing the walls. The lines had broken. They were lost.

They were lost.

_We only have to kill one man._

He threw himself into the fight. He was too old for this. He was too tired. He was bleeding. The Night King didn’t seem bothered or deterred or at all _concerned_ by the fact that he had some of the best fighters in the realm against him. Why would he be? He was beating them handily. Jaime’s strength was already flagging. Brienne’s strikes were weakening, and her face was entirely bloody. Even Arya’s savage gleam was beginning to fade as she grew more worried.

But it didn’t matter how tired he was. Killing the Night King was the only thing that mattered. Literally nothing else did. Wights swarmed him, and he fought them, and he fought to get closer even as they sliced and stabbed at him. He had always been sure that he would die in this battle, but he refused to die without winning, first. He had made it this far. Surely it was for a reason. Bran Stark said he was necessary. Brienne told him to live and fight and take revenge. His sister sent him to Highgarden. Surely it must mean something. That was the only thing that kept him fighting. _Hope_. It was a strange thing to feel. He hadn’t felt it very much in his life, and feeling it now felt like a pathetic performance to force himself to fight. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but this.

He blocked and swung. Blocked. Dodged. Struck. Jabbed. He wondered if the Night King would ever get tired.

The wights and the scattered Walkers among them were coming from all sides, now. Perhaps knowing that their king was in danger. More reasons to hope. If the creature _could_ handle them all, they would not need to lend the extra support. Jaime fought through them, trying to keep Brienne in his sights. Wights fell easily on his blade, and he lost himself in the feel of the fight. It was never as good as it was before. He’d always felt _right_ when he fought; it was something that he didn’t have to _try_ to do. Now it was all effort, constantly _trying_ , every step planned and thought of and executed. Fighting his instincts with every swing. It kept him alive. It made him _furious_ , and it made him want to try harder.

Arya joined him again, wordless, a shadow. She had taken one of the weapons from one of the Walkers, and she whirled it around and made that horrible glass sound every time she met another blade. Jaime ground his teeth and followed her, joined her, watched her back. She was a reckless fighter, more reckless than he would have assumed, and he didn’t know if her constant refusal to cover herself was just foolishness or a show of trust in him that he refused to fail.

She used the Walker’s weapon as a scythe, and often twirled it with two hands only to pull one hand off it and use her dagger to finish the job. It flashed through the air like a spark catching flame as _Widows Wail_ — _Maiden’s Heart—_ joined it. Together, they beat the dead back with their dance, the screaming song of it rising and falling with the wind. Wights were dying everywhere, but that wasn’t enough. The dead were inside the walls of Winterfell. Tyrion was there. Sansa was there. All the injured and the helpless. It wasn’t enough to kill the Walkers, and there was no possible way they could handle all the wights. They needed to kill the Night King. They needed to stop him from raising the dead again. That was all that mattered.

He and Arya broke through the wights at last. _It’s all that matters,_ he told himself as he stood against the Night King. Arya engaged him, and Jaime followed her. He protected her. He kept the wights and the Walkers back with his blade. He didn’t look for Brienne. He didn’t look for any of the others. He had no idea where they were or what had happened to them, but he couldn’t look for them. It didn’t matter.

Then the creature met Jaime’s blade, and the sword was knocked from Jaime’s hand. Jaime fell back, breathing hard, his exhaustion slamming into him. He was safe with a sword in his hand. Even with the wrong hand, he was safe. But he couldn’t even see the shape of his blade in the snow. He reached back for Arya, making sure she was safely behind him.

“Go,” he told her.

“Not a chance,” she said. They backed away together, further down the ridge. The Night King followed at his slow, unwavering pace. Arya ducked away to kill a Walker that got too close. Jaime finally spotted Maiden’s Heart. It was half buried in the snow, just in front of the Night King. If he could only…

He tried to scramble for it, but the Night King stopped him, sending Jaime sprawling and grunting in pain as the kick impacted his wound. Arya sprang, swung, and the Night King caught her by the throat and threw her down, pinning her with his foot.

_No_ , Jaime thought. Arya struggled. Her fingers scrabbled at where the Night King’s foot was on her neck. Jaime thought of Catelyn Stark, standing proudly over him, demanding that he swear an oath. He thought of Myrcella and Tommen and even Joffrey, perhaps, the children he could not save. He thought of Sansa enduring his family’s hatred, and Arya surviving on her own, and he thought of Catelyn Stark dying, trying to save her son. He thought of all of it in a vague sort of way. An impression of duty that brought Brienne to mind as well. It wasn’t just duty. It couldn’t be. But it was what he had to do. He labored to his feet. He stumbled back to his knees, reached for Maiden’s Heart. He heard the song of sword on sword. He turned. Brienne had appeared. She looked…

_Glorious_. She looked glorious as she met the Night King. Her face was a horror, and her hair had all been matted with blood and sweat, and she had a desperate snarl on her mouth. _Your great beast_ , Tyrion had called her once, and Jaime had been angry to hear it, but he wasn’t angry now. His great beast. She _looked_ beastly now. She looked strong. She looked alive. He felt hope again, and he loved her.

Arya rolled away, coughing, trying to crawl to her feet. Brienne and the Night King crossed blades. She backed away, towards Jaime. The Night King kicked her back, and Jaime felt the hope die as she took a slice in her sword arm. Oathkeeper tumbled from her fingers. She staggered back. Arya was wavering on her feet, but she had her little dagger in her hand, and she was moving forward. Jaime found his fingers wrapped around Maiden’s Heart, and he shouted Brienne’s name. She heard him, somehow, and he flung the sword in her direction. It hit in the snow, skittered towards her, and Brienne ducked to grab it. There was a screech, a roar, and Drogon flew overhead again. Brienne shouted Arya’s name. The flames were just above them. Jaime could feel the heat, and he shielded his face from the light.

It was over quickly. The flames had scorched a path of fire through the snow, and Brienne stood on the other side of it from the Night King, who stared up at the dragon in what looked like _annoyance_.

Jaime pushed himself back up to his knees. The Night King advanced on Brienne, heedless of the path of fire. Arya was almost at him with her dagger.

_One man_ , Jaime thought. _I only have to kill one man_.

He saw Oathkeeper gleaming in the path of fire, the ruby on its hilt catching his eye as it reflected the flames. He had a hysterical moment of thanking the gods he no longer believed in that Brienne had been too stubborn to remove the Lannister gem. He lunged for it. He could feel the heat from the hilt through his glove, but it was not enough to burn him. The flames licked at the blade, but he pulled it free. Arya was lunging at the Night King, and the Night King anticipated her. Brienne was blocking another swing with Maiden’s Heart. Jaime reached the Night King at last, and then he was thrusting Oathkeeper at the creature’s back. _It really is your best move_ , he heard Robb Stark say.

The Night King felt Jaime’s presence. He seemed to know exactly where Jaime was. Exactly where Jaime’s instincts had screamed at him to strike.

The creature whirled to block the thrust with his own sword. Jaime caught the ice blade with his steel hand. He felt a single moment of confused triumph as he met the Night King’s gaze.

Oathkeeper was buried in the creature’s heart.

_You_ are _just one man_ , he thought. The Night King's body began to crumble to nothing around the blade. _You stupid bastard. You forgot you were fighting the cripple._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Giant Leap by Frans Bak
> 
> listen, when someone tells you who they are, believe them. in my case, when someone tells you they're an unrepentant Jaime stan, understand exactly what that means


	68. Daenerys VIII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dany grieves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whew, thank you to everyone who commented. I actually read the comments for last chapter because I was EXTREMELY nervous, and I feel so much better now! 
> 
> This will be the only chapter today, because I am terrible at time management.

When Drogon landed at last, he did so among the dead. They were under his feet, their bones crunching and cracking. Most of them had long ago been burned by Melisandre or the men who rode out with her, and they turned to dust beneath her dragon’s weight. Some were more recent, and the smell was almost too much for her to bear.

The smell had haunted her since the battle began. It seemed to seep into everything. She would forget when she was in the air, but when she landed, it was inescapable. The others must have grown used to it. It was in their hair, on their hands, carried with them on their clothing. Everything was death, and only Dany escaped it for long enough that it was able to surprise her when she returned. She would go to her bed in Winterfell smelling it, and eat what little rations were on offer while smelling it, and she would go again into the sky where the smell was replaced with the familiar scent of Drogon and the heat of his flames. Some relief, though flying on the dragon’s back brought its own aches and pains.

But that was over now. She would not have to take to the skies again to fight the dead. It hardly seemed possible, and she knew it would take some days for it to wear off. Some time to accept that the dead were not still out there, waiting for her to stop them. Even now she was tense, her every instinct telling her to fly higher, where the Night King could not reach her.

She and Drogon had been high in the air when the Night King was finally killed, but she had _sensed_ it. She had even seen the place where it happened, through the storm. The wind and snow had been enough to thwart her senses, but something had rippled out from the spot on the ridge where she knew the fighters still were clashing with the leader of the dead. A light had flashed, a gleam, and then a wave of sensation followed it. Like the air had been _pierced_ by something. A gust of strong wind had followed, surprising she and Drogon both and nearly unseating her. By the time they were settled again, the storm had begun to abate, and the sun had started to rise.

She had been just over Winterfell, after being blown off-course, and she had looked down in time to see the bodies of the wights falling lifelessly from the walls. She had never, in all her life, felt such joy. It was a gladness that spread through her entire being, all the way to her fingertips. She had laughed aloud, finding that hope could make her dizzy like some of the sweet wine Tyrion was so enamored of. Hope rediscovered after days without it, and hope immediately answered. They had won.

They had _won_ , and it was over _._ Days and days of darkness and fighting and an impossible futility, and it was _over_. It had passed. The sun cast golden rays over the battlefield, and her chest was full to bursting. She was alive. She was so glad to be alive.

But the battlefield had grown lighter, and her chest felt less full the more time passed. The more her eyes lighted on the darkness below. Bodies. Bodies burned and whole. Bodies and swords and armor. Men and women and horses and _wolves_ , of all things.

Rhaegal had flown past her, then, and he let out a roar that was mournful and not at all triumphant, and the smile faded fully as she remembered. As it set in.

They had won. But the cost…

And so she had steered Drogon to the ground. She wasn’t sure she was ready to face it, but she knew she didn’t have a choice.

She had watched Viserion fall from the sky during the battle. She remembered well where he landed, but she would not have needed the memory. His form was visible from above, so close to Winterfell’s walls. Bright and gleaming in the sunlight that she had thought so beautiful only moments ago. Maybe it was still beautiful in its way, but the joy had been so fleeting, and she couldn’t find the beauty in it any longer. She had been so captured by the happiness that it was _over_. It was over, and they had won, and she could rest.

But no. Of course she couldn’t rest. She had never had the luxury of resting for long, and this was no different. A moment of happiness followed by the remembrance of all the pain that had happened to get her here. And all the pain that would continue as they tallied their losses and understood exactly what it had cost to defeat the threat.

The walls of Winterfell had been piled with the dead, and her armies had been scattered across the field of battle every time she saw them. Her friends, her advisors, her _husband_. She knew nothing of them. She only knew of her dragon, and she knew where he lay, and so that was where she went. 

Viserion was crumpled and cold when she reached him. She had had no doubts during the battle that he was dead. She’d seen him fall, and she had understood. But still it was such a shock to see him so still. Her child. She remembered when he had been small enough to fit into the palm of her hand, and now he was sprawled, majestic and enormous and _grown_. Dead. She knelt beside his head and stroked his nose. She hoped that it had been quick. She hoped that he had not suffered. She thought of the wounded fighters she saw every time she came back to Winterfell. Their screams and their sobs and their crying out to the gods who did not care to her them. They had suffered, and many of them had died, and perhaps they all were dead now, inside the walls.

She was afraid to go in and see. She was afraid to look for her people, her friends, her family. She had seen Robb on the ridge with the Night King. Was it he who dealt the killing blow? Was it her nephew? Was it Jorah? It could have been any of them. And any of them could have died in the attempt.

She would have to face it eventually. She knew that. She just couldn’t do it yet. She’d earned it, hadn’t she? A moment to rest and to mourn and to hide from the rest of the world. She knelt there in the snow, and it seeped into her coat and into the leather leggings she wore and into the balancing hand she put down on the ground beside her. Her other hand, she kept on Viserion’s nose. Rhaegal roared and flew overhead. Perhaps he was still Bran Stark, but perhaps not. Perhaps Bran was dead now, too. Her odd little brother. She’d hardly had time to relish in that: family. _Having_ a family. Saying words like _brother_ and _sister_ and feeling her heart swell with it. She’d had no time to do anything but prepare, and now she may have to mourn more lost siblings.

Drogon curled his massive form around her as best as he could, as if he meant to protect her, the way he used to when he was small enough to drape himself around her neck. He nudged at her with his snout, and she reached back to stroke his nose. Did he understand? Did he know that he had lost a brother? Viserion was not so bad a brother as Viserys had been. Would her dragons mourn their losses the same as she would?

Rhaegal landed and stomped through the battlefield not far off, nosing at corpses. The men of the north would not like to see her dragons eating the bodies of their comrades, but she was too numb to do anything but watch as he went about it. _Please_ , she thought. _Please, just fly away. Hunt elsewhere._ Luck was on her side, and Rhaegal took off. She watched him go. Her eyes strained after him, her stomach clenching with dread. Then it released again. Tension soothing out of her limbs. She didn’t need to fear any longer. The Night King was dead.

She had scarcely believed Robb’s words about the Night King when he first started speaking to her of it. He had looked so apologetic, like he couldn’t imagine her ever believing him, and that was one of the only reasons she _did_. There had been something in his eyes that had made him difficult to disbelieve. The furrow in his brow, the way he always seemed to be almost cringing back from her judgement.

She couldn’t imagine what might have happened if she didn’t believe him. If she had stayed south. She would have taken Kings Landing quickly, she was sure, and then she would have received word that the north had fallen to the dead. She would have felt guilt for that, for disbelieving the man who tried to warn her. She would have prepared her armies. Would she have had enough strength to take on the Night King by herself?

Would she have enough strength _now_ to take on Cersei?

The thought was an exhausting one. She didn’t know. She knew nothing beyond Viserion and Rhaegal and Drogon. She knew nothing but the cold in her knees and in her hand. The anxiety built within her, and she knew she would have to stand soon and find out what had happened to the others.

_I’m afraid_ , she admitted to herself. It felt good to accept it. _I’m afraid of what I’ll find_.

* * *

Grey Worm found her there. Others had walked by her. They gave her dragon a wide berth. They had been reverent before, but they were too tired and too jaded now for reverence, and Dany was glad to be left where she was. But Grey Worm was a welcome sight, and she rose to her feet when she saw him. He was missing his helmet. An enormous bruise covered one side of his head. His eyes were tight at the corners. She had last seen him holding Missandei as they slept in their small quarters off of Dany’s own. That was days ago. He had been so far from her, holding the front lines. His survival seemed a miracle to her. Perhaps it wasn’t the only one. 

“Missandei,” she said. It was a question, but she was afraid to make it one. Grey Worm smiled. He was so tired that he was wavering on his feet, but his smile was young and full of energy, and Dany felt her heart clench in response. She smiled back. She went to him and took his hand. He was overwhelmed, and she understood, and she had never felt more relieved. She wanted to cry for him, and she wanted to cry for herself. _Alive_ , she thought. _Missandei is alive. Grey Worm is alive._

_Please, let it continue. Please._

“She is well,” Grey Worm said. “I spoke to her through the doors. They are still trapped inside. The bodies are piled. We cannot get to them yet. But we are moving to get them out.”

“That’s excellent news. Was Tyrion with her? Sansa?”

“Tyrion was in the crypts. He is helping us. Sansa is inside as well.” Grey Worm’s smile had taken on a sad edge, and Dany’s heart could not take it.

“You have more news,” she said.

“Yes,” Grey Worm admitted. “I am sorry.”

* * *

She did not take Drogon with her to the ridge where the Night King met his end. She left him slumbering beside Viserion’s body with Rhaegal, who landed just before she set out. Her dragons deserved the rest. They had had so little of it in the past few days.

She had thought that she would find it difficult to walk, but it felt good to stretch her legs. So much of the past days had been spent riding Drogon, and that was never the most comfortable thing. Grey Worm supported her most of the way up, though because he was almost as tired as she, it turned into the two of them supporting each other fairly quickly. But as they were nearly at the top, she looked up from her feet and saw her husband waiting for her above. His hand was outstretched, offering it to her. He had more blood and more bruises on his face than when she had last seen him, but he smiled at her when she met his eyes. She longed to wipe the trickle of blood that she saw falling from his curls, and she longed to peel off his armor and find someone to take care of all of his hurts. He hardly looked like the same man she had married. So long ago, it felt like, though she knew it had been no time at all.

He was wondrous. It wasn’t even about the relief of survival or the way the sunlight after so long a night seemed to make everything it touched glow golden and perfect. It was just _him._ Knowing that he was hers and knowing that they had both survived. _After_ had been spoken so many times, but it had always been spoken with a lilt. A wish more than a true hope. An expression of uncertainty. _After_ , they would have time for a true marriage. _After_ , they would discuss what to do when they ruled Westeros. _After_ , they would be a family, and they would be happy. It was _after_ now. They had done it.

_My husband_ , she thought, shocked by herself and by the feeling of it. He had been a rival king and an annoyance, and then an ally and a friend, and now he was her husband. Still an alliance to make. Still a wise choice. But she loved him, didn’t she? And she would have the time to love him longer.

“Robb,” she managed, and she gripped his hand, and he pulled her into his arms. She felt his weight against her. He hugged her desperately. “You’re all right.”

“I’m so sorry,” he told her, and she knew that he was earnest. He had not known what to make of Jorah Mormont at first, and she had seen the politely reserved way they’d interacted during the journey from Dragonstone, but he knew Jorah’s worth to her, and he was sorry for her. “I saw him take the injury, but I hadn’t thought it was so grievous. He fought ‘til the end.”

She nodded. Of course he had. She only wished that she could have been with him, to give him some comfort. Perhaps he had been able to see her from where he had lain on this ridge and taken his final breaths. She had not loved her bear in the same way he had loved her, but she had loved him all the same, and she wished…

_He is dead_ , Grey Worm had said, and it had struck her like a physical blow. He had been with her so long. Even when they were apart, he had at least been alive. And now…

“Can I…?” she started, and Robb nodded. He pressed a gentle kiss to her brow.

“I’ll wait for you here,” he said. She wanted to tell him to head back without her, that she could make it on her own, but she saw the determined set of his shoulders. She saw the searching way he looked at her, as if he still could not believe that they were alive. She understood, even beyond the echoes of her own similar feelings; he had lost one wife at a wedding. She knew how difficult it must have been for him to watch a second ride into battle.

“All right,” she said, and she squeezed his arm once before she continued on her way.

* * *

Jorah was resting almost at the top. She passed a few other fighters making their way down. The man they called The Blackfish was leaning heavily on the man they called The Hound, limping on a wound through the leg that was still bleeding sluggishly. There were other men, men in the crimson and gold armor of the Lannisters, who had already begun to tend to their dead. She passed the Kingslayer and the Maid of Tarth. She passed Jon Snow, her nephew, who gripped her shoulder in solidarity on his way by. And Arya Stark, her sister, who did the same. She wished to follow them. She did not wish to see. But she felt she owed it to him. Her friend.

He had fallen awkwardly, as if he had knelt for a time to rest and realized he could not get up, and then had leaned gently backwards to recline against the rocky outcropping beside which he had sat. He had one arm laid out atop it, and his head rested on it, tilted toward her. He looked as if he were sleeping.

Dany knelt in the snow beside him, and she felt along his chest, where the injuries were obvious. Something had opened up a gash in his armor. A long, gaping wound. What kind of weapon had done that? She pricked her finger on the edge of the broken steel and drew her hand away, curling it into a fist. It stung, and her eyes stung with it.

Jorah’s eyes were only mostly closed. She did not like the way he sightlessly stared at her, and so she ran her hand over his face to close them fully. It didn’t help. It made him look even more alive. More at rest. She wanted to shake his shoulder and greet him with a smile. _Wake up, my friend_ , she would say. _You are too old for sleeping like this. You need a comfortable bed._ She tried to remember the last time she had spoken to him. It must have been in the haze of those days of battle. She could remember seeing him. She could remember hugging him. When was it? What had they said to each other? She couldn’t remember. That seemed cruel. Why would she not remember? Why had she not burned it into her memory so that she could recall it now?

It was so impossible that he was dead. So much of her life had been filled with him. He had been with her through everything. Even when she had banished him, she still felt his presence in every choice she made. Even when it _infuriated_ her, she had loved him, and she had missed him, and she had wished for him by her side. _After,_ she had thought, when they were reunited again. _After everything is won, we shall have a chance to speak of it, and I will finally tell him everything that his betrayal made me feel, and I will finally forgive him._ She _did_ forgive him, had forgiven him, but did he know?

She didn’t know how to move forward without him, but she would. There was still so much to do. The bodies would have to be gathered and burned. The crumbling sides of Winterfell’s walls would have to be rebuilt. They would have to travel to some warmer place, where there was food. Yara had offered Pyke for their recovery, but it was too harsh a place, and if the gods were good, it was still too small for all her armies. It would be Riverrun or The Vale, instead, and she would need to gather her people back to her. There would have to be food enough for all of them, and there was strategy and trade involved in _that_ as well. How impossible it was to celebrate a victory when it was only half complete. There was farther yet to go. She wasn’t at her goal.

_He never got to see me take the throne_ , she thought, with a kind of sadness, but the thought faded quickly, and the sadness faded with it. No, Jorah never got to see her take her throne. But he wouldn’t have minded that. The throne was never his goal. Seeing her made queen was never his aim. Men like Varys and Tyrion, men she counted as her advisors and, at times, as her friends, _they_ wanted her on the throne because they believed that it was what was best for Westeros. Jorah hadn’t cared about that. Jorah had cared about _her_. She was the one who wanted the throne. He would have been pleased to see her take it, but only because that was what she wanted. 

_I came here,_ she thought, staring down at his face, so well known, so dear to her. She brushed her thumb over his cheek. Touched his face and felt the sharp bristles of the beginnings of a beard. _I came here, and I helped to save the world. We fought alongside his family. I made the choice to help and to stay instead of turning my gaze to the throne. And he was so pleased with me for doing it._ That _was what he wanted from me._

He and Ser Barristan both. They had both followed her. They had both cared for her. They had both died. For her.

_If I look back, I am lost_ , she told herself, but unless she looked back, she could not remember the ones she had loved, and there would be an emptiness inside her. If Robb had been the one to die upon this ridge, would she refuse to look back at him, and at these days during which she had been able to glimpse a possibility of future happiness? Or would she look back and see him smiling and remember why he had made her want to be a better queen?

She touched Ser Jorah’s face and hair, and she finally leaned in and kissed him on the brow. Her loyal bear.

_I will be a good queen_ , she thought. _I promise. I will not be my father. I will not be either of my brothers. I will be the queen that you saw in me from the beginning. I will be what you would have wanted me to be, and what Barristan would have wanted me to be, and what Irri would have wanted me to be. I will be that queen, and I will remember you, and I will make you proud._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Loss by Phoria


	69. Jon VIII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon and the others return to Winterfell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry I didn't post a chapter yesterday, but it ended up being a surprisingly busy day! You'll have at least two today, maybe three. I'm in an editing kind of mood, so hopefully I can fly through. There's a massive wind storm in my area, so I want to get at least two up now in the event that I end up losing power!

It was over.

It was over, and Jon didn’t know how to accept it. He had for so long lived in a world in which the Night King was his biggest concern. How was he supposed to stop thinking about it?

Always, no matter what he was doing, no matter what else was happening, he had been worrying. The dead. The Walkers. The Night King. What else _could_ matter? It was the end of the world. _The end of the world_ , but it had passed, and it was over, and they had won. What was he supposed to do now?

The ground seemed to shake, when it happened. Some unsteadiness under his feet. There had been a flash of light through the snow. Some reflection off the flames. And then he had turned, and there were no more wights to fight. All of them fell like puppets with their strings cut. Dropping to the ground and staying down. The Walkers among them had crumbled, turning to shards of ice though no blows had been struck. He had been surrounded by the dead, but suddenly there was only Robb, by his side, dropping the final wight from his sword. Robb had laughed, then. He understood before Jon did. The storm began to lessen. Robb stumbled over the immobile wights to reach Jon, and then he flung his arms around him. They were hugging in the middle of the battlefield, and only _then_ did Jon realize.

_It’s over_.

* * *

Jaime Lannister was leaning heavily on Brienne as they staggered towards the gates. They were all a little worse for wear on the long walk back to Winterfell, made longer by the need to stop and help the wounded they came across. Lannister and Vale men, mostly, on this side of the battlefield, but a few Dothraki and Free Folk groups as well. The Free Folk all cheered Jon as he passed, certain he’d been the one to do it. _It wasn’t me_ , he wanted to say. _I didn’t do anything_ , but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He found that his head was ringing as if he had taken a blow, but he hadn’t. It was just relief. Nothing else could touch him. They had done it.

It was over.

The war, the dead, the Night King. The growing threat and the impossibility of making anyone else believe in what they hadn’t seen. All of it had built there for years at the back of his mind. It was what he worried about when all the other worries subsided and he should have been allowed a moment of peace. This shadow that would crop up out of the darkness and remind him that there was still so much left to fear. Moments of happiness interrupted as he remembered. Even when he was at his calmest, even when he was sitting by the fire in Sansa’s solar with her shoulder brushing his as she worked on her embroidery, even _then_ it was there, inside him. Panic that welled and swelled and never fully subsided.

And now it was gone.

It was impossible to think of it as _gone_ , really. His brain refused to accept it. _We need to prepare_ , he’d think, and then he’d stop, and then he’d remember. There was a lightness that wanted to spread through him, but it couldn’t. He was too tired. They had lost too much. Everywhere he looked, there were bodies. Burned or untouched. Wights and their own men, piled in the snow. The storm had covered some of them. The flames had taken more. They would need to dig everyone out. They would need to build pyres. Burn them, just in case. They would need to…

Arya was complaining loudly to an injured Sandor Clegane about how slowly he was moving. Jon wanted to take Jaime Lannister’s other side to help them move faster, but he wasn’t sure how Lannister would react, and in truth he was too tired to do much more than trail behind the rest.

He didn’t see the strike that killed the Night King, but he didn’t need to. Arya had been giddy with it afterward, when he and Robb had found her doing her best to help Brienne navigate Jaime down the rocky slope. Jaime had been limping, bleeding, annoyed and pale but smiling broadly. Jon was used to Lannister’s sarcastic grins and his softer smiles for Brienne and Sansa. He had known before Arya even spoke. She had laughed when she saw Jon and Robb, and she stood out to the side and did a bowing little flourish in Jaime’s direction. _I give you the Kingslayer,_ she’d said in a mocking tone that was explosive in the purity of its relief.

Jon had thought. Well.

It wasn’t every man who was raised from the dead by a red priestess. He’d said something to Sansa to that effect, reminding her that he was meant to have some kind of purpose, and Sansa had rolled her eyes and said that Melisandre once thought _Stannis_ was the one with purpose, so it wouldn’t be so shocking if she was wrong.

Still. He’d thought it had to be him. He’d been sure that he would die in the attempt, but he had also been sure that he would do it. He _had_ to. Sansa and Arya and Robb and Bran had been counting on him. And Davos and Brienne and Daenerys and _all of them_. The thing he had been warning of. The thing he had been fighting and preparing for all this time had finally come. He had been raised from the dead to fight it, and yet it was Jaime Lannister who had delivered the winning strike.

_What was the point_? He would ask the red woman the next time he saw her. _Why did you need me? Why did you bring me back?_ Was it only because of the truth of his birth? Was it only because of his Targaryen blood?

He thought of everything that happened after he was killed. Sansa arriving at Castle Black. Both of them traveling, gathering support for the north. Taking back Winterfell. Reuniting with Robb, with Arya, with Bran. Falling in love with Sansa, and finding himself loved in return. It wasn’t _nothing_. He had convinced Robb to speak with Daenerys about the army of the dead. She had ridden north with Jaime Lannister in her party, and they had convened here, all of them, to fight. Maybe it wasn’t the killing blow, but it wasn’t nothing.

It wasn’t bitterness, he didn’t think. Jealousy, maybe, just a bit. Mostly it was relief that he had survived and relief that someone else had stepped in to do what he could not. Disappointment, perhaps, but only in a general way. It would have been like something from a story or a song.

But he had known, fighting the Night King. He had so quickly tired against his foe. The days of fighting had sapped his strength, and the hours of toiling in the snow and fighting against the wights and the walkers just to _reach_ the creature had left him nearly empty of the energy he needed. He had known almost instantly that it wasn’t going to be him. _I_ can’t, he thought, a hundred times, every time the Night King seemed to predict exactly where Jon’s sword was going to go. Fighting had always been Jon’s biggest strength. He was a natural. He was gifted. He’d had training and the dedication to see it through. It should have been easy, but it wasn’t. _I can’t._

It was the thing he thought he survived for. The thing he thought he was still _alive_ for. He hadn’t been able to do it. Maybe tomorrow it would bother him more. Maybe tomorrow he would be more disappointed. He couldn’t muster anything but gladness with the sun shining down on them and with everyone he loved still alive.

Tyrion Lannister met them just at the bottom of the ridge, on a horse. He looked down at his brother and smiled his relief, and he returned the favor to the Starks, telling them that Sansa and Bran were both safe and well inside Winterfell’s walls.

The last of Jon’s tension left him, and he could have collapsed into the snow and slept there unburdened for a hundred years, at least. He kept walking, though, trailing after Jaime as whispers of _Kingslayer_ began to spread among the survivors. Jaime looked well pleased, and he said a few laughing things about the change of tone behind the old familiar name. He largely seemed to ignore their reverence as he had once ignored their scorn. Maybe tomorrow _he_ would feel differently, too. They were all too tired to truly react to anything.

“If you had just _told_ me you were bleeding…” Brienne started from up ahead, and Jaime laughed at her.

“A wight bit off half your bloody cheek, and you almost ran me through for suggesting we go back. Of course I didn’t _complain_!”

“It isn’t the same,” Brienne insisted. Jon looked up from the ground to smile fondly at the back of her head. She really _was_ stubborn. And wonderful. He was glad that she was the one protecting Sansa.

_Sansa_.

He smiled a bit wider, delirious with exhaustion and relief and a hundred other things. Sansa was safe. All his family was safe. It was all he had wanted. It was more than he ever dreamed they would get.

“Isn’t the same?” Jaime was asking, vaguely outraged. “I’m surprised you’re so cavalier about infection after you spent _weeks_ dealing with mine in the Riverlands.” 

“I can still walk,” Brienne said staidly, and Jaime grumbled something rude about how she should be _grateful_ he refused to turn back, given how he was the one to deal the final blow. His limp got noticeably less pronounced as he tried to prove to her that he wasn’t so badly injured after all.

They were drawing closer to Winterfell, but there still seemed to be so much farther to go. The distance stretched out, lengthened, made collapsing in the snow seem like a tempting prospect.

“Is it really so bad?” Brienne asked. Her voice was quiet, but it carried to Jon, who watched her. She ducked her head as if immediately embarrassed by her own question. Lannister was looking at her too. Jon could see the way his mouth worked to find an answer. Jon himself found the bite on Brienne’s cheek difficult to look at, and he was glad that they would be to the castle soon so that Sam could treat it.

But he didn’t _love_ Brienne. Not as Jaime did. He didn’t think he’d know what to say to her in Jaime’s place.

Jaime didn’t find the words immediately. He simply pressed a lingering kiss to the cheek that was facing him. Her uninjured cheek.

“You still have one whole cheek for kissing,” he said, managing to sound at once sincere and roguish. Brienne’s face went instantly red at the gesture, and it spread to the back of her neck as she hunched her shoulders to try and make herself smaller. “That’s all I need.”

“Jaime,” Brienne warned.

“It will heal,” Jaime said quietly. “Better than my stump has. Your skin can regrow, but unfortunately hands…”

Brienne groaned aloud and said, “forget I asked” in an aggrieved tone that made Jaime laugh. Jon watched and listened, fascinated. He had known, of course, that they cared for one another, but he had never paid much attention to their dynamic. They were usually quieter around other people, perhaps not wanting the Starks to see their sworn sword chatting so familiarly with the Kingslayer. But everyone was a little less reserved now. A little less cautious. Everything had been so shit for so long, and everyone had been so devoid of hope. That they had it now made them nearly drunk on relief. He understood.

“Just think,” Lannister pointed out. “My old wound opening in the middle of battle. If I succumb, the songs they’ll sing about you. Slaying the Kingslayer who slayed the Night King.”

“If you die of a weeks-old wound, it will be the stupidest thing you’ve ever done,” Brienne said, and Jaime laughed again, and he looked at her with longing.

* * *

When they reached the gate at last, Sansa was waiting just inside it. She was standing with Missandei, the two of them looking warm and safe and unharmed, bundled in fur cloaks. When she saw their party approaching, Sansa gasped and darted forward. She threw herself at Jon first, and he caught her despite his every muscle protesting his fatigue. He found the energy to lift her. He found the energy to press his face into her hair, the way he did when she first came to him at Castle Black. _She’s alive_ , he thought. _You’re alive._

She released him then and hugged Arya, who grumbled, and Sandor, who did the same. She asked after Robb and sagged with relief when Arya answered that he was all right. When she saw Brienne’s cheek, she gasped a watery, tear-filled gasp, and she took Jaime’s other side to lead them back into the castle, berating both of them for getting themselves hurt. Missandei ran ahead to call for Sam, and Jon followed, because he did not know what else to do.

The keep was bustling with activity, with soldiers and servants alike helping the nurses tend to the wounded. The halls were clogged with soldiers sleeping, collapsing where they stood and allowing the exhaustion to catch up to them. Everyone else just dodged around them, allowed it, until more beds could be found. Davos was organizing several of the better-rested men to carry litters out to the battlefield for those who could not make it back in on their own power. The Blackfish, wounded himself, was going with them. Varys and Tyrion were moving between the beds that had been laid out in the hall, counting the living and tallying the wounds so they could organize supplies. Jon spotted Gilly in a horde of women carrying water from the hot springs. As he watched, she directed them in beginning to clean wounds up and down the lines.

Sansa led Brienne and Jaime further back, into one of the storerooms, which had been packed with cots. Sam was there, darting between the wounded soldiers in their beds, his jolly face still smiling and optimistic, though he was covered in blood and sagging with exhaustion like the rest of them.

“Jon!” he exclaimed happily when he saw him. “Oh dear, Lady Brienne! Here, put the, um. The. Jaime. Put Jaime down here, and I need to take a look at that face.”

“I’m fine,” Brienne argued gently. “Please tend to Ser Jaime. He opened up an old wound, and…”

“Ser Jaime will be fine, Brienne,” Sansa said. “We can handle his injuries in the hall.” She tugged him away from her, and Jaime released Brienne reluctantly, unhooking his arm from around her neck and transferring it instead to Sansa’s. Sansa bore his weight easily. “We’ll tend to him. But you _need_ to have that treated by Sam.”

Brienne’s expression wavered, but she nodded. Hesitantly. She met Jaime’s eyes.

“All right,” she said. She was afraid, Jon realized. She knew how bad it was. She didn’t want anyone to _tell_ her. Jaime smiled at her hopefully. He was flagging, but he wasn’t going to let it show. He allowed Sansa to pull him away, and Jon followed them.

Back out in the hall, Jaime stumbled. Jon hurried to shore him up on the other side, and Jaime wrapped his maimed arm around Jon’s shoulders with an exhausted murmur of thanks.

“Jaime!” Tyrion shouted from across the room, making his way through the crowds. Jaime tried to stand up straighter, but he had already let his strength ebb, and he could not bolster it again to try and prove he was all right. Tyrion looked at Jaime with horror, and he helped pull back the sheets on one of the only unoccupied beds. Sansa and Jon lowered Jaime gently, and then they worked together to get his armor off, peeling away the layers, exposing the wound in his side.

Sansa froze when she gripped the shirt Jaime was wearing. The color was a deep blue, and it hid well the blood that had soaked it, but Sansa must have felt how sodden it had become. She looked up and met Jaime’s eyes, and something passed between them that Jon didn’t quite understand.

“Go ahead,” Sansa said softly to Missandei, who began to cut the shirt open. Jaime lay back against the pillow, his jaw tight.

Sansa didn’t flinch when she touched the blood or the exposed skin of Jaime’s stomach. She didn’t wrinkle her nose or back away or even look remotely sick. Jon knew that she had been dealing with the injured for days, but somehow seeing her in action…She was resolute. Glorious. He loved her.

“Lie back,” she ordered, and Jaime obeyed as Tyrion propped up the pillows behind him and called for a nurse’s aid.

“I’m fine,” Jaime was saying, but his words were slurred and mumbled, and it did nothing to calm Tyrion or Sansa, who glanced at each other and then began to work more urgently. Missandei had spotted their distress and was bringing over an older, stocky woman that Jon recognized as the cook. She shouldered Jon and Tyrion out of the way and called in her booming voice to a young boy who was hauling water.

Sansa was rolling up her sleeves further, and tying back her hair. Missandei untied a pouch at Sansa’s hip and dug out some thread and a needle, and Jon realized that Sansa was going to stitch the wound. The boy brought the water, and the cook held down Jaime’s shoulders as he weakly tried to remind them all that he was fine and they shouldn’t be concerned. Missandei dipped a rag in the water and started to clean the area. The boy took another rag and was cleaning off Jaime’s face, much to his annoyance; he tried to bat the boy away with his steel hand, unthinking. Tyrion was shouting at him to lie still and stop being such an asshole. The cook leaned harder on his shoulders. She was a strong woman, and Jaime could not move if he wanted to. Jon found that he was laughing. It wasn’t an appropriate time to laugh at all, but he couldn’t help it. He was just so _tired_ , and it was all so absurd.

Jaime began to laugh as well, catching sight of Jon smothering his mirth over Sansa’s shoulder, and then Sansa and Tyrion were looking at both of them like they were mad.

“Jon,” Sansa said, with a kind of annoyed amusement, affection creeping in to her voice. Jon laughed again and excused himself, leaving her to stitch the wound in peace.

He banished himself to look in on Sam and Brienne. Maester and patient were both grimacing as Sam prodded at the wound. It had been cleaned of the excess blood, and it wasn’t quite as difficult to look at, but it was still a terrible thing. A wight had eaten her cheek, Jaime said, and that was exactly what it looked like. Jon didn’t see it happen. Brienne had been beside him at one moment and then gone in the next. There had been wights around them. It had been all Jon could do to stay alive. Jaime had yelled, and disappeared as well, dropping down the ridge after her. Jon had been sure they would both be killed, but Brienne had been stronger than ever when she made her way back up the ridge. It was Jaime who had been shaken by it.

Sam sighed and stepped back to meet Brienne’s eyes. He was so much more confident than he had been. Jon noticed it first when Sam returned to Winterfell with Gilly and Little Sam, but it had only gotten stronger, since. It made Jon want to weep for some reason he couldn’t figure out.

“It’ll hold together with some stitches, and I’ve got a salve that will help the pain. We’ll keep it covered in bandages to let it heal some. But I’m afraid it’ll leave a nasty scar.”

“I expected as much,” Brienne replied.

“It won’t be so bad, though! I bet my father wished _I_ could have picked up a scar like that. You’ll look rather fearsome, my lady!”

Jon winced. Of all the fool things to say…

It was so like Sam not to realize it, too. Sam probably thought that Brienne _wanted_ to look fearsome and strong. He probably thought that she would _like_ to be cowered away from. He looked at her and saw the things that _he_ had once wished he could be. Tall and well muscled enough to make weaker men quail. And now with a dashing scar and everything. Jon didn’t know Brienne as well as all that, but he knew her better than Sam did, and he understood her. He thought of the way she had ducked her head when she asked Jaime how bad the scar was. He thought of the way she’d reddened when he kissed her cheek. And he thought of the brilliant way she had smiled when Podrick announced before the battle that Jaime Lannister had knighted her. She had been happy to be made a knight. She would have been well pleased if it was some other knight who had done it. But it was the man who had knighted her that made her smile in that particular way. No, Brienne would not like to look _fearsome_ at all.

“You saved Arya,” Jon said. Brienne looked at him. Her eyes swam with emotion. “You saved Sansa first, but you saved Arya out on that ridge, and you saved Jaime, and you saved _all_ of us.” She nodded. She smiled painfully in his direction. He knew it would not help everything, but hopefully it at least gave her _some_ comfort, to remember what she had fought for.

* * *

Afterward, Sansa found him standing in the hallway, near the stairs up to his room, contemplating the effort of climbing them.

“There you are,” she said. “Come on. You need rest.”

“I don’t think I can make it up,” he admitted. Sansa tucked herself under his arm.

“We’ll do it together,” she said.

Jon had been a bit embarrassed when they were reunited at Castle Black and he realized that Sansa was taller than him. He wasn’t embarrassed about it now. If he was embarrassed about anything, it was how grateful he was for her height and her steadiness as he leaned against her. Was this why Jaime Lannister looked up at Brienne with eyes that sparkled? Was it this feeling like they could do anything so long as they were together?

They took the stairs slowly. It still felt like there was so much to do, but Sansa reassured him as they climbed that everyone was collapsing, exhausted, and that he could join them without issue. They had days ahead to get to the work. The wounded were being watched over by a new shift of nurses. The collection of the bodies that remained whole had been started by Lyanna Mormont and other fighters who had been wounded early in the fighting and had recovered at least some of their strength. Robb had returned with Daenerys. Grey Worm had taken over the operations in the great hall. Missandei and Gilly were getting some much needed rest. Jon listened to her voice as they climbed. It was soothing, to hear it. He hardly understood the words, but he understood their meaning: everything was in hand, and he didn’t have to feel guilty for resting.

He found as they reached his rooms that she had ordered a bath for him. He tried to protest the effort, but she shook her head fondly and called him a fool. She kissed him on the temple and pushed him towards the bath.

“I’ll be back,” she promised. He supposed he should have protested that, but he had vague memories of her stripping his clothes from him more than once, during the fighting, when he was too tired to worry about things like decency and what people would say about it. It had been nice to be so looked after. Her eyes had always been teary and desperate, and she had wanted to take care of him however she could, in whatever ways she would be allowed when he was still safe within Winterfell. He’d been too tired to do much more than run a cloth over his body, but she had always washed his hair, after, getting out all the blood and the mess that was stuck inside his curls. He’d loved her for that, in a quiet way he didn’t know how to express at the time. Had been too tired to express, maybe.

He was tired now, but not in that same hopeless way. He was tired in a way that edged towards contentment. An unburdening so complete that his body would finally allow itself some true rest after holding itself rigid and tense for _weeks_ on end. He headed for the tub, shedding his ruined and bloody clothes as he went. The nice new shirt that Sansa had made for him. He set it aside carefully. She would fix it, he knew. Without him even asking. He’d find it with the rest of his clothing one day, and it would look as beautiful as it ever had. That was how Sansa showed she loved someone. The thought made his chest swell with pride. He piled the rest of his clothing on the floor and slid into the tub to wash. The heat of it seeped into his skin and into his muscles and down into his bones. It was a terrible idea, this bath. He’d fall asleep in seconds if he didn’t move. 

Sansa returned with a stack of towels and some sweet-smelling oil, and Jon murmured a protest that didn’t carry very far when she knelt beside the tub and began to help him wash his hair. He should be embarrassed. He should tell her he could do it himself. But it felt so nice to be looked after. He’d so rarely been looked after like this in his life, and he was so _tired_.

“How was Jaime Lannister?” he managed to ask.

“Despite his insistence on being _fine_ , he passed out four stitches in,” Sansa said. He couldn’t see her from where she was seated behind him on the chair as she worked her hands through his hair, but he could hear the amusement in her voice. “Tyrion nearly had a fit, but Jaime’s all right. Just tired, and he lost a lot of blood. We woke him up to give him some milk of the poppy to help him sleep through the pain. Podrick wanted to drag him down to the baths with Brienne, so I sent a few nurses with them. They’re both sleeping now in Tyrion’s room. He didn’t want them in the infirmary.”

“That’s nice,” Jon mused. “Do you think there’s an understanding?”

“No,” Sansa said. “I don’t think either of them are so self-aware as that. I know he loves her, though. I know she loves him.”

“Everyone should just be smart about it and propose marriage the night before a battle,” Jon said. Sansa laughed. It felt so good to hear her laugh like that. Bright and unburdened. Not wry, or bitter, or hard in any way. She was relieved, too. He turned his head a bit to look at her. He still couldn’t see much from this angle, but he could see some things. Her hands, her fingers. Her hair. The way her eyes crinkled at the corners as she smiled at him. Gods. He loved her so much. How had he ever gone about his day _not_ loving her? How had it taken him so long to realize it? Yes, she had been his sister once, but _surely_ he should have realized it anyway. She used a small cup to scoop up some water to pour over his head, and then she worked the oil into his hair. This was the nicest he had ever felt. He could have cried for it.

“Maybe he did,” Sansa said. “Maybe she turned him down.”

“She wouldn’t. You didn’t see the way she looked at him.”

“That’s an awfully big assumption. You can _hear_ the way she looks at him.”

“I meant out there, after the battle. When she realized he was really hurt.”

“Oh, I can imagine. I bet it was just like all the songs.”

Jon stifled a smile. Sansa had always loved those stories. _He’d_ loved them, too, once, but not like Sansa. He had feared that her love of them had been bled out of her by the years since they had left Winterfell. It was good to hear her talk about them now.

“It was a little like the songs,” he said. “Though the songs never said much about wights eating the fair lady’s cheek.”

“Yes, but if they _did_ , they would also write about the fair lady realizing that the handsome prince liked her quite well despite her scars.”

“A _handsome prince_ , is he?” Jon chuckled.

“Well, he has the handsome part down at least.”

“He does,” Jon admitted.

“But you’re the prince, really.”

“A hidden prince,” Jon pointed out. “A bastard prince. That’s got to be in the stories somewhere.”

“Oh, of course. Loads of them. A handsome hidden bastard prince.”

“He doesn’t mind the fair lady’s scars either, you know,” Jon pointed out. His fingers brushed over her forearm, where it rested on the edge of the tub. She always wore her sleeves long, and her collars high, but he had known since that first night at Castle Black that her time with Ramsay Bolton had not left her unmarked. She swallowed and took his hand in her own.

“I don’t know how much of a fair lady she remains,” she said easily. “She doesn’t trust like she used to. She doesn’t laugh like she used to.”

“If he’s a handsome hidden prince and not a sulky boy, then she’s a fair lady,” Jon insisted, which made Sansa laugh at last. Her eyes were wet with tears.

“All right,” she said. “I believe you. Do you regret it?”

He did not have to ask what she meant. He knew exactly what she was asking.

“No,” he said. “It wasn’t just because we were going to die. I would marry you. I _will_ marry you gladly.”

Sansa leaned around the edge of the tub to turn his face towards her, and she pressed her lips to his, and Jon sighed. _There_ , he thought, as the last of his exhaustion left him. _Now it’s the nicest I’ve ever felt._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Breaking Through by Rick Clark and London Music Works


	70. Robb X

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robb and Daenerys talk after the battle.

Robb found his wife standing over the map in the war room. She had been bathed and dressed again in a gown that he had not seen her wear since Highgarden. Her hair had been washed and brushed and braided, and it shone against the candlelight in a way it hadn’t in weeks. She looked nothing like the shadowed woman who climbed down the ridge to him after bidding goodbye to her loyal friend. A mask was firmly back in place, and he felt sorry to see it. His own mask refused to do the same. He was still too tired, and he was still too relieved that they were alive. He wanted…

He didn’t know what he wanted. Everything he wanted was selfish. Needy. Unseemly. He wanted to hold her again. He wanted to sleep with her in their bed. He wanted _time_ for just the two of them. It had been days since their wedding, and still sometimes he forgot that they _were_ married. He had never been married in peacetime, and seeing her standing over the war table, he was reminded that still he was not. No matter what his relief would have him believe, this wasn’t the end of their trials.

Compared to the Night King, Cersei was hardly even a problem, but still the conquering of Kings Landing lay before them, and they were not as strong as they had been. It would be days yet before they would truly understand their losses, and only then would they be able to comprehend how much of a struggle lay before them. Jaime Lannister had been insistent when he spoke to them, weeks ago now, that Cersei should not be underestimated, and Robb _knew_ that. Still, the threat of her seemed pale compared to the exhaustion he was facing.

He was so tired of fighting.

He’d had time at Riverrun to recover, but even then it had been a fight inside him. Hating himself and hating the war and crawling away from every responsibility. But that time seemed a thousand years away from him now. Childhood seemed even farther. What had it been like to be so happy? So unburdened by war? He couldn’t remember. Sometimes memories of childhood and lighthearted games would come to him suddenly, but he couldn’t remember what it was like to not worry. He would look back at those children and think _you should have been more prepared. How did you not realize it was all going to end?_

He was tired of that, too. Of rewriting his past. Rethinking his every action. Doubting himself and judging himself and hating himself for every decision. After the storm, after the wights fell around him and he knew that the Night King had been killed, there was a naïve moment in which his only thought had been _it’s over_. Repeated again and again in his mind. _It’s over. It’s over._ A bell ringing out, pealing an end to his struggles. What a fool. Of course it wasn’t over.

He understood why Daenerys wanted to move as quickly as possible. She had never learned to rest. She hadn’t even experienced his childhood, filled with love and acceptance and support. She ached to reach for it. She wanted the wars done as badly as he did, and for her that meant never stopping until they were.

Maybe a better man, a more ambitious king, would be the same, but Robb was not. He wanted that rest. He wanted to take some time for himself, and for her, and for his family. He was sure that they would crumble if they kept moving now. They were all so tired.

“There you are,” he said, and she looked up at him. Her stony expression withered away just a bit as she stood with her hands spread out over the map. She looked at him, took him in, the same way he had done when he first entered the room. He’d only recently bathed himself, and he was wearing softer clothes than he’d known in weeks. Sansa had found him in the hall and pressed them into his hands, and he had grown teary-eyed, then, embarrassing himself and Sansa both. But she had held him, kissed him on the side of the head the way their mother used to do. _Get some sleep, Robb,_ she had said, and her eyes were glimmering with happiness and unshed tears. _You deserve it._

The hunger on Dany’s face was the same sort of hunger he himself felt. It wasn’t hunger for anything in particular. It wasn’t lust, and it wasn’t need, and it wasn’t even love. It was just the closeness they craved. It may well even be the prospect of sleep. Crawling under their furs and holding each other beneath them. Something so simple would not be such a consuming desire on any other day, but it was a consuming desire now. He smiled at her. She didn’t smile back.

She had the dragon token nestled in the web of her thumb and forefinger, in its current spot above Winterfell, cloistered with a pack of wolves and two golden lions and all the other army tokens that still stood in their orderly lines in the plains to the north, not yet tallied and culled. Daenerys gathered the dragon in her fingers and dragged it across the map to Kings Landing, walking around the table so that she stood across from him. The dragon stilled over the Red Keep, where the lone lion waited.

“Talk me out of it,” she said. Her voice was ice. Her eyes were red with recent tears. “Talk me out of getting on Drogon tonight. Talk me out of burning the Red Keep and Cersei Lannister to ash and ending these wars myself before anyone else can die for me.”

When Robb was at Greywater Watch, when he was yet unsure that he would survive the wounds he had been given, he had dreamed often of revenge. He never thought of it when he was awake. It seemed an impossible thing to hope for, and a terrible thing to want. In his waking hours, it was a lax kind of sadness that settled over him, occasionally made sharper by a grief that pierced him when he realized that his mother was dead, and Talisa was dead, and he would never see them again. It wasn’t the loss of the war that had grieved him. It wasn’t even his failures as a king. He’d never asked for that. He’d never wanted that. He was sad in a vague sort of way that he had failed his father and his sisters and his brothers, but the losses of Catelyn and Talisa were what pierced him the most. They were what he saw when he closed his eyes.

Revenge wouldn’t bring them back. Revenge wouldn’t undo his choices. He never thought of revenge when he was awake.

But when he dreamed, it was often of revenge. He would dream of their faces. Walder Frey and Roose Bolton and Joffrey Baratheon and Tywin Lannister. He would dream of their screams and their pleas for mercy. In his dreams, he cut through them like a monster. A heartless man who’d lost all reason for kindness. When he woke, he would shake and gasp and breathe heavier and harder until he remembered that it _had_ been a dream, and that he was not that man.

He recognized the longing on his wife’s face. He recognized the anger that had nowhere to go. In Greywater Watch, his enemies had still been alive. His killers had been rewarded for their betrayals, and the ones who had directed them had been too strong to take on. His waking hours were all filled with pain, but his dreams had bitten to the heart of it and promised him revenge he did not have the power to take. They promised him Roose Bolton. Walder Frey. Tywin Lannister. Men who were still alive, men who could still be fought.

But where did you put that anger when the enemy who had shattered you was already dead?

He understood. He knew that she had loved Jorah Mormont, and he knew that she had loved her dragon like it was her own child. He understood the way her fingers shook as she held the dragon over the Red Keep, and he even understood the way her expression filled with fear. He remembered lying awake after those dreams and hating himself for them, wondering what had happened to him to make him into the kind of man who could dream of causing such pain. Not to the men who made those terrible choices, but to the people who surrounded them. In his dreams, he didn’t care _who_ he killed to get to them. Daenerys had always been afraid of being like her father.

_Talk me out of it_ , she begged, because she knew her hate was misplaced. She knew that she didn’t want to be the kind of queen who took her revenge no matter the cost. She only needed to hear it from someone close to her.

Cersei Lannister was a problem to be removed, but she hadn’t caused this. _Robb_ had, in a way, by asking her to come here. _Daenerys_ had caused it by listening. By choosing. Even Jorah had caused it by insisting on fighting on the front lines, though Daenerys had asked him to stay in Winterfell to guard the others. But mostly it was the Night King, and he was an impossible thing to hate. He was just a creature, just a _thing_ , a once-man who operated on some instinct, not a man who made choices based on hatred or greed.

And he was dead. Jaime Lannister had killed him, and the opportunity to take her revenge was gone.

If she flew to the Red Keep now, it would not heal her heart. It would only kill untold hundreds. Perhaps untold thousands. Perhaps her among them. That wasn’t revenge. It was madness. It was everything Daenerys didn’t want. But they were all losing their grip here, after the end. Robb understood. What she wanted and what she feared may have been easy to mistake, at a time like this.

“We don’t know anything about what Cersei Lannister has waiting for you,” he said. “Yara and Theon drove their uncle out of the Iron Islands, but he escaped with several ships and with a weapon that no one understands. They _know_ you have dragons. That isn’t a surprise to them anymore, and they’ll be able to see Drogon from any approach. Cersei will have bolstered her defenses on her walls. Even if you managed to get past them, she has wildfire, and she may have this horn that Euron claims can control dragons. If you go to Kings Landing, unaided, with only Drogon, you will die. And there are half a million people in Kings Landing, Daenerys. If you die, how many of them will you take with you? Even one would be too many, and it will be more than that.”

He walked around the table towards her. Daenerys watched him approach. Her expression wavered.

He understood. Of _course_ he understood. There were ways in which their paths had been so similar, even as there were ways in which they could not be more different. Daenerys thought she needed to remain strong. She thought that she had to hide her sadness and she thought that she needed to quell her anger and she thought that she needed to face her people only once she had all the answers. 

She thought that she needed to hop onto her dragon’s back and take out the threat on her own, because she did not want anyone else to die for her as Jorah had. If Robb had had a dragon after the Red Wedding, there was no doubt that he would have longed for the same. _He_ probably would have even attempted it.

“I’m sorry for what you’ve lost,” he said. “You know that.” He reached for her, and she closed her eyes, and she allowed her face to tilt trustingly towards his touch. “But burning the Red Keep, risking your life, risking Kings Landing…it isn’t going to bring them back. It won’t make you feel any stronger or any safer or any less lost. If you live through it, and people are killed, you will regret it. If you die, _I_ will regret it, and all the rest of us.”

She nodded against his hand.

“I knew that was what you’d say,” she said. She smiled up at him. There were dark circles under her eyes, but they shone out at him anyway. She looked as exhausted as he felt, but she was still so beautiful. She was alive. She was his wife. They were _safe_. It was impossible, and yet it was true. He never thought he would feel like this again. “That’s why I needed you to say it.”

“I know,” he said. “I _am_ sorry.”

“I am too,” she replied. She moved the dragon figurine back up to Winterfell, and she set it beside the wolves and the lions and the fish and the birds. _Safe_ , he thought. “Cersei Lannister is still out there, and she’s still a threat. You told me once that she would keep. Will she still?”

“Cersei will never march on us. She’ll keep as long as we need her to. The only problem is that delays will give her more time to prepare, but according to Varys, she doesn’t have the gold or the power to do much of that. Delays might only help us. Her people are starving. Many of them escaped north to us. Gendry said that the ones who were left were hungry and too frightened to leave. Maybe they aren’t anymore. She doesn’t have enough strength to take the Vale, and she doesn’t have enough strength to take back Riverrun. She has Euron Greyjoy, and she has a company of mercenaries, and she is running out of gold. She is weak, and she will only grow weaker. We’re at our weakest now, but we can recover and grow in strength. Your trade lines with Pyke and Dorne will give us what we need. We should rest and heal our wounded, and then we should carry on to Riverrun. The army can regroup there, and we will ensure our success.”

He knew he wasn’t saying anything that was new to her. She had come up with most of this plan herself. But she needed to hear it, and she nodded while he spoke.

“Thank you,” she said. She looked down at Winterfell on the map with a rueful sigh. “I used to think that being queen was my destiny. I suppose I still do. But I don’t think I gave it much thought, when I was younger. It was just what I had to be. I needed to be strong. I needed to avenge my family. I had no time for anyone who questioned me or doubted me. If I wanted to fly into the Red Keep and burn everyone there alive, I would have expected them to follow me. I would have expected them to cheer me for it, and I would have ignored anyone who advised me caution. Even Jorah, perhaps.”

“I know,” Robb said, because he did, and because she looked like she was expecting him to hate her for something that he had always known about her. Falling in love with her had not been the same as falling in love with Talisa. Talisa had never hidden anything, and that was why he had loved her. Daenerys had been like a package to unwrap. Layers of her falling away under time and his growing attention to what lay beneath the public face she showed him. It had been an exploration of her before it had been love, and he didn’t think there was anything about her that could surprise him now.

“Meereen taught me that I don’t know enough about ruling,” she said. “Not the way it’s done. Not the way it _should_ be done. I know the way it _has_ been done. I have heard stories about my ancestors, and I have seen other rulers in action, but it wasn’t until Meereen that I started to think about my own style of rule. It wasn’t what I wanted it to be. I’m willing to learn. I know by now the things the worst kings and queens do, and I have seen so little of effective leadership. It should be simple, but I know it isn’t. And there isn’t time. Cersei Lannister cannot remain on that throne. Westeros will be weak until she is removed. The threat of the dead is gone, but there is _always_ another threat to follow, and we need to be ready for it.”

“I agree,” Robb said.

“I don’t want to be like my father. I don’t want to rule through fear. I don’t want to be like my ancestors, either. I don’t want to hold myself apart and tell everyone that I’m divine. I want my people to love me. I want my people to think that I am a good queen. A good _person._ ” She laughed at herself. Robb wrapped his arms around her.

“You will be a good queen,” he said. “I have faith in you.”

“I had faith in myself yesterday,” Daenerys mused. “I don’t know where it’s gone.”

“You’re exhausted. You’re grieving. That’s where it’s gone. I know the feeling well. It will come back with some sleep and some more planning. I promise you.”

Daenerys shook her head, but she smiled at him.

“You make it sound so simple,” she said. She looked back down at her map. “The truth is that I don’t think I _want_ to be queen. It used to be the only thing I wanted, but now that it’s so close, I find myself dreading it. Now I think I _must_ be queen, because there is no better choice. I feel a responsibility to do it.” 

“A duty,” Robb said. He understood well. She nodded against his chest, and she pulled herself away reluctantly.

She looked down at her map. “I _will_ do it,” she said. “After I have rested.”

“Good,” Robb said. “And I will be by your side for all of it.”

Her smile then was tired, and she pressed up on her toes to kiss him and pull him close. He allowed himself to be pulled. _Thank the gods_ , he thought. They were both still alive. He hadn’t lost _her_ , too. _Thank the gods_. He hoped he would not dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Long Way Home by The Slow Show


	71. Brienne X

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brienne wakes the next morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, my lights have started flickering threateningly, so I'm gonna go ahead and post this now!

Brienne woke after hours of sleep, and she saw the lack of light coming through the curtains. She felt numb, well-rested. Relaxed. It only lasted for a moment.

She had slept too long.

It was time to go back out. She sat up, and she put her feet flat on the floor. She was in a comfortable cot, in a larger room than she was used to. It was dark, and quiet, and she didn’t recognize it. She only knew that she needed to get up. The bells had rung. It was time to—

“Brienne,” Jaime said, and she turned to look at him. He was in a cot, too, beside hers. She remembered, then. She remembered Sam stitching and bandaging her face. She remembered Podrick finding her, hugging her despite Sam’s protests about keeping her steady. She remembered the way the medicine seeped into her and made her head fuzzy. She flushed and looked down at herself. She was in her smallclothes. The rest had been a ruin. She and Jaime had been taken down to the baths by the nurses and Pod. There were dozens of other soldiers there, but Brienne had a bath all to herself, separated from the rest by a curtain to protect her modesty. It made Jaime laugh and slur something improper about Harrenhal. Two of the nurses had helped Brienne clean her wounds, while Pod had helped Jaime. Brienne hadn’t been able to see them, but she had heard Jaime answering the boy’s quiet questions about the final stand against the Night King.

Whispers of _Kingslayer_ had followed them as Podrick and the nurses brought them up to Tyrion’s room, upon Tyrion’s request. Men bowed to Jaime, which made him laugh harder. There was a bitterness to it, an annoyance.

 _To be so hated for a noble act_ , Brienne had often thought of him. The weight of it, carrying it around everywhere. It was no wonder he preferred to pretend at a lack of seriousness. But she could see that it hurt him now, even still, that they thought his first kingslaying a dishonorable one.

Once they were safely in Tyrion’s room, they had all four fallen asleep. Tyrion in his bed, Jaime and Brienne in cots, and Podrick across the room on a settee. Brienne’s own room had already been filled with sleeping soldiers, she was told, and she didn’t mind the privacy of the arrangement.

She hadn’t minded, either, when Jaime woke with a start in the middle of the day, with the sun still filtering through the curtains. It was impossible to say how long they’d been asleep, but it hadn’t been nearly enough. Jaime had apologized shakily for waking her, but she had understood. The medicine hadn’t done much to combat the nightmares, but it made them sleepy and slightly silly once they were awake. She and Jaime had pushed their cots together so that they could be closer. There was so much that was still raw within her. Raw and burning and cold and tired. She felt hollow, scraped thin, like the way she felt when she heard that Lady Catelyn had been killed. Purposeless. She was too tired to think anything of purpose, and she had just been so happy that Jaime was with her. With her, alive. It was easier to fall back asleep, knowing he was there.

He was looking at her now, propped up on one elbow. His hair was all in a disarray, a cloud of imperfection around his head, and she ached. It was just them in the room; Tyrion and Podrick were both gone.

She remembered the way Jaime’s breathing sounded when they slept beside each other in her tent. She remembered the desperate way they clung to each other when they slept in the library, grabbing what few hours they could so that they could keep fighting when the time came. She remembered that this was the last time that this closeness would be excusable.

People stopped caring about propriety in times like this. With death was so close, those pettier things were far away. They didn’t matter. People needed to be comforted, and they needed to be held, and everyone understood.

But those things would matter again, now. They were still at war, but it was a normal war, fighting against normal men, and Brienne would have cause to worry about her reputation again. Fighting the dead had been different. It had been so hopeless and so impossible and so terrifying. Of course people had held each other. Of course they had sought each other out. It was as necessary as the sleep itself, or the few bites of meat in every bowl of stew. _Kingslayer’s Whore_ , they had called Brienne once, and maybe it would be spoken with a less damning edge now that _Kingslayer_ was being spoken in a more reverent tone, but it should still be avoided, if she could.

She looked at Jaime, and she saw how pale and tired he still looked, with those dark circles beneath his eyes and that small, helpless smile on his face. She got back beneath her blankets, and she lay on her side. She wanted to turn away from him, turn her back, but that would mean lying on her injured cheek, and she was afraid to do that.

Not that she was any less afraid to watch him look at it. The way his eyes grew tight. The way his fingertips brushed over the bandages. She couldn’t keep them on her cheek forever, but she dreaded the moment she would have to remove them and see the scars. She still hadn’t; she had rejected Sam’s offer of a looking glass. She could imagine well enough. Every time she tried to sleep, she remembered the feel of that creature eating her cheek. She didn’t need to see it, too.

“It’s over,” he reminded her. His voice was quiet and calm. She nodded against his hand, and she closed her eyes. Jaime’s thumb was stroking the bandages on her cheek. She could scarcely feel it, with the medicine still pumping sluggishly through her. She remembered the look on his face when he first saw it. It didn’t matter. He was never going to be hers to keep. She shouldn’t be so ridiculous.

They both survived. Lady Sansa survived. Robb survived. All of the Stark children. She had not failed her oath to Lady Catelyn, and Jaime was still here, and they had defeated the Night King. There were so many things to celebrate, and a wound on the cheek was a small price to pay for it.

She opened her eyes, and she met his gaze. _I kissed him_ , she remembered suddenly. It seemed half a dream. How had she found the courage? She couldn’t seem to find it now, and Jaime did not make the move toward her. He looked at her with worry, and he moved his hand down to her neck so he could thumb the stitches there, too. She snaked her hand beneath his covers and placed her own fingertips against the wound she had given him at Highgarden. He smiled at her, and she could feel the muscles of his stomach contracting.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and she shook her head. If kissing him seemed a hundred years ago, Highgarden was a thousand or more. Her sword in his side. His blood on her hands. His forehead pressed against hers, and his breath on her neck. _I’m sorry_. She understood now, better than she had. She moved her hand up, trailing sleepily up his chest and around to the back of his neck, so she could brush her fingers through the hair there. His head fell forward a bit in response, allowing her access to the soft skin there, and she felt the bristles of his hair brushing her knuckles, and she felt the pull of her cheek when she smiled at him, and she felt everything. Everything. So much love.

 _He isn’t yours to keep_ , she thought again, and she touched him and looked at him, and she would remember him exactly like this. Soft and sleepy and borrowed for a time. Hers, even if it was only for now.

* * *

When the sun came up, the medicine had worn off, and Brienne was herself again.

She had slept for an entire day, and she learned later from Podrick that she wasn’t the only one; most of the fighters had done the same. After days and weeks of fighting, they needed it. Brienne felt like she could have done with still more.

But she woke, and her head was finally clear again, and she looked beside her and watched Jaime sleeping. His face looked less lined, less tense than it had during the fighting. He looked more like himself again. She pulled the curtains closed tighter so that the sun wouldn’t bother him, and then she left.

Her cheek stayed hidden. Sam insisted on changing the bandage himself, perhaps because he didn’t trust Brienne to look at it long enough to do it herself. He was probably right. She felt the stitches pulling every time she spoke, and she knew that the scar would be a hideous one. Ugly and snarling. She could not think of it. She pushed it aside.

She helped Tormund and his people sort through the dead. Davos joined them, looking for the red woman, Meslisandre, who had not been seen since the fighting. They didn’t find her amongst the dead, either, but Davos helped them with their task anyway. They loaded the soldiers onto litters and deposited them according to their houses on funeral pyres that the living arranged. Her room was finally emptied and cleaned as more soldiers went back to their tents outside the walls, and she was able to sleep in her own bed that night. She hadn’t seen Jaime all day.

* * *

Two days after the battle, the business was finally done, and everyone who yet lived gathered outside the walls of Winterfell to watch as the bodies were burned.

Jaime found her out there, and he frowned at her, displeased. She knew that he thought she was avoiding him, and perhaps he wasn’t wrong. He stood stubbornly by her side during the ceremony, after lighting the pyre for his house’s soldiers.

After, she made her way through the gates, and he followed her. She entered one of the towers that would take her up to the battlements, and still he was behind her. She could hear his footsteps on the stone. She felt dread, and she knew now that she _had_ been avoiding him. She’d dressed it up like it was about the work, but she couldn’t deny it any longer. She felt like a coward. She remembered the feeling of her lips pressed against his. _I kissed him_ , she thought. _He kissed me back. He kissed my cheek, too. The unruined one. He reached for me in his sleep. He wanted me near._

But he had never been hers to keep, and that hadn’t changed. The war for the living was over, and now they would march on Kings Landing, and she knew he could not stay. It was too much to hope. Too much to allow that hope and then risk the heartbreak that would follow. It was too late to protect herself fully. She had been too eager to kiss him at least once. Too eager to close off the part of her mind that had to disbelieve him when he said that he loved her.

When they were safe up on the walls, alone, with no one around to hear them, she turned to face him. His brow was furrowed in the anxious way he always tried to hide. He hid it quickly, his expression going smooth and neutral, but she had seen it, and she was frozen by it.

She had forgotten.

In her rush to protect herself, she had forgotten that she was not the only one uncertain. Jaime sometimes seemed to her to be so much more experienced than herself. He had an aura to him, a confidence that she always assumed applied to everything about him. But all his life, he had loved only his sister. The way he had spoken of that love recently, it was a love very nearly unreturned. A love spoken, used, transformed into whatever Cersei wanted it to be. A love that never took Jaime into consideration. It made sense that he had turned to Brienne. Who better? A woman who would be so grateful for his attentions that she would not mind that his only other lover had been his twin. Or perhaps a woman so grateful that she wouldn’t even mind that those attentions were bound to be temporary.

But that was panic. And that was unfair. He was Jaime, and she knew him. Even if he did choose, in the end, to leave, she knew that it wasn’t something he was thinking about now. He wouldn’t be trying to trick her. He wouldn’t be dishonorable towards her. If the past weeks in his presence had done anything for her, they had renewed and firmed up her impression that he was a good man who had made the right choice. Love, that _wasn’t_ a choice. There were many things that Jaime had done for which he needed to be redeemed, but loving his sister wasn’t one of them. Not to Brienne, anyway. In her rush to protect herself, perhaps she had not been clear enough with that. Instead of telling him, she had avoided him. Instead of speaking to him about her fears, she had evaded discussion of it. He told her that he loved her, and she refused to speak of it. Had he been this concerned, this self-conscious, all along?

She suddenly felt like a fool for not realizing he would be. His sarcastic mask slid back into place easily, but she knew it for the falseness it was. She was, absurdly, _sorry_ for him.

“You know, everyone here is quite taken with you,” he joked. “They all want to hear the story of how you saved my life. Arya Stark has been doing a grand impression of me getting beaten into a snowdrift only for you to swoop in valiantly to save me.”

“Yes, you never would have killed him without my very brave distraction,” Brienne answered, and Jaime smiled at her. Still crooked and a little nervous, but it was a true smile. He was looking searchingly up into her eyes, and she refused to look away. He stepped closer.

“You’ve avoided me,” he said.

“Not,” she started, but to say _not intentionally_ would be a lie, and so she closed her mouth again. Jaime’s smile took on a sharper edge.

“You have,” he said. “I can’t imagine why. I was rather hoping we’d gotten past all that. Or was I meant to read that kiss as the desperate act of a woman who thought she would die? Was I the nearest available set of lips? Tormund will be quite jealous when he finds out that all he had to do was follow you a bit more closely.”

“Jaime,” she warned, and he deflated, his wounded ego making his shoulders slightly hunched. “It wasn’t that. You know…”

“I really don’t, Brienne,” he said. He was weary, now, and he leaned against the merlon to look out at the snow. There were still patches of it where the blood hadn’t yet been covered. Brienne leaned against the wall as well, just within reach. She looked down at her hands.

“I _did_ think that we were going to die,” she said. “And so I found the courage to…to do what I wanted to do.” Jaime was watching her. She could see it out of the corner of her eye. “But you…you fulfilled your promise. You fought for the living. Now we will march on your sister, and I know…”

“You know _what_ , Brienne?” he asked when she paused for too long.

_I know I cannot compete with your sister._

_I know I was never beautiful, and now my face is ruined._

_I know that you have always gone back to her, always, and that you will go back to her this time, too._

“I know…” she started again, but she could not say it. She stared at him helplessly, and he looked back at her. That nervousness was back in his face. “I know that you…”

“You don’t,” he said, when she faltered and couldn’t speak. “You don’t know.”

“You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”

“Neither do you.”

“No,” she admitted quietly.

“Brienne, I want to be here,” he said. “With you. You kissed me, which I read as you wanting me here as well.”

“I do,” she said, miserable.

“I’m not going anywhere. I’m still here, Brienne. Two days have passed, and I’m here. I’ve told you before that I have no intention of going back.”

“No intention,” she said. “But she…” She still couldn’t say it. Jaime’s smile was half hopeless and half savage.

“You think I’m still the same fool who would make the same mistakes.”

“No,” she insisted, though of course that was exactly what she was saying. His sigh was withering, and she didn’t want him to know how weak she was. “I don’t think it’s foolish to love. I don’t think it’s a mistake to love. I know you can’t help that.”

“I do love Cersei,” he told her. His voice was clipped in that way he got when he was at his angriest and also at his most determined to hide it. “I have loved her since we were children.” His every word was a painful reminder of what she had already known, and she felt herself shrinking back, but he refused to let her go. He gripped her arm in his hand, and he looked at her beseechingly. “But you can love someone and hate them at the same time. You can love someone and _know_ that it’s based on a lie. You keep looking at me like I’m going to wake up and remember that I love her. I _have_ been awake, Brienne. That’s why I’m here. I love her. I do. I imagine I always will. She’s my sister, and she was so much to me once. But that love is not _unchanged._ It’s not the same as it was. I’m not the same man. I haven’t been, even if it took me too long to see it, but especially not since Highgarden. I already loved you then, a love I’ve been proud of every day since, but Highgarden made me see it plainly. I have been trying to prove it to you. I fought beside you. Lay beside you. And still you don’t know. You believed once that I was a good man. What changed? What have I done to make you think…?”

Now he was the one who couldn’t finish, and she found herself gaping at him. How could he not understand? Did he really think that _he_ was the one lacking?

“You love her,” she said. “You have loved her your whole life. That doesn’t make you dishonorable. It doesn’t make you terrible.”

“She’s my _sister_.”

“We don’t choose who we love,” she reminded him, and he laughed at her. Bitter and tense. She continued, “we choose what we do with that love. Your choices haven’t always been honorable, but it isn’t your love for her that does that. You can love your sister and still choose to do the right thing.”

“And what is _the right thing,_ Brienne? What would you have me do now? You seem so convinced I want to leave, and you push me away for that imagined crime. What should I do, then? What would a good man do?”

She didn’t know. It was an impossible position for him to be in. _Stay_ , she wanted to say. But would it be the right thing to stay? Would it be the right thing to go back to his sister and try to convince her to surrender? Would it be the right thing to flee Westeros with Cersei entirely? End the need for more fighting? Brienne couldn’t say. Brienne didn’t think his sister was the right person for the throne, and she hated Cersei for what she had done to Sansa, at the very least, but she knew all too well what it was like to love someone the world said was a terrible choice of a person to love. She knew what it was like to be the only person who could seem to see their goodness. How could she judge him? Jaime loved his sister in the same way Brienne loved _him_ , and she of all people knew how lonely it was to love someone the world regarded as a monster. _Kingslayer_ , they said now, with a reverence that made her love less dishonorable than it had been. But she had lifted her chin and refused to be ashamed of her trust in him for so long while facing down the worst sneers of the word. _Mad queen_ , people said of Cersei. Did Jaime’s chin lift in the same way?

“I don’t know,” she said. “It isn’t my choice to make for you.”

“Is it a choice at all?”

“Of course it is. I could not help you, but there are ways you could make your way south. If you…”

“Gods,” he sighed, explosive. He stepped closer to her. His eyes flashed. She remembered suddenly how he had hummed against her mouth when she kissed him. “You’re always so certain. _Always_ so sure that I want to get away from you. You think yourself a good judge of my character, and you have yet to realize that the opposite is true.”

Even now, he was stepping closer. Following her. He had followed her here. He had slept beside her in her tent, and in their bed in the library during the fighting. He had dogged her steps every minute of the battle, always beside her. An extension of herself.

“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“What do I have to do?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, because it seemed kinder than saying that there was nothing he _could_ do. Nothing except staying. Choosing her. Every day choosing her, and she couldn’t allow herself to believe that he would.

“You’re afraid,” he said, and she felt her cheek burning and throbbing, and she felt her bruises, and she felt every ache and pain. The sun was too bright. The smell of smoke and death was still too strong.

“Yes.”

“Is that why? You’ve trusted me with everything else, but you can’t trust me with this?”

Another beat, and she shrugged. One shoulder lifting half-heartedly.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe. No. Maybe.”

“I can’t respond to it if you won’t tell me what it _is_.”

“Look at me,” she said.

She hadn’t meant to say it. It came out of her exasperated, angry, and she couldn’t tell if she was angry with herself for saying it or with him for being the one to prod it out of her.

His expression shifted from confusion to outrage.

“Look at you?” he asked. His tone made it scathing. Unforgivable. “ _Look_ at you? Brienne.”

He pressed his advantage, and he moved still closer. He was looking up into her eyes. Up, not down. He was taller than Cersei. Beautiful Cersei, without any scars.

“Cersei,” he said. “Always feared getting old. She feared losing her beauty. She thought it would make me love her less. She didn’t understand. Even when I told her. Even when I laughed at her fears and kissed the marks on her stomach, she pushed me away and blew out the candles, and she painted herself up. It didn’t matter. It never did. I loved her. I would have loved her regardless. And I love you the same. It isn’t _love_ if that isn’t true.”

He spoke the words so easily. So certainly. He spoke as someone who had been in love before, and she felt like a fool and a novice beside him. He spoke like he was sure. But he had been sure about Cersei, too.

“She’s beautiful,” she said. “And I never was. I’ll be uglier now.”

“I suppose you will. And I will be uglier every day as I get older. And I will be handless always, and a sister-fucker with a terrible reputation and very little to my name.”

“You know that isn’t…”

“Important?” he finished, savagely pleased, seeing that he was backing her slowly into a corner in her own arguments. “No, it isn’t. Because you love me. It isn’t love if you only love me at my best. Do you think Cersei cried for my lost hand? Do you think she held onto my stump and kissed it and told me that she would care for me, help me, love me regardless? Do you think she ever let me touch her with it without shuddering in revulsion? Cersei loves with conditions, Brienne. I never have. I should have realized sooner that we were too different to ever love the same. It is one of my greatest regrets that I didn’t. You speak of my love for her as if it’s not dishonorable. I thank you for that, and I think I may love you all the more for it, as well. But it was never the goodness you seem to think it was. I was always reaching, trying, hoping to make it so, but it wasn’t.” She could not speak. She did not know what to say. She put her hand on his chest, lightly, and she brushed her thumb over his shirt, trying to think. He had a way of speaking that always put her out of sorts. He always had.

“I am not used to…this,” she finally said. “When I was younger, my septa…” But no, she didn’t want to tell him that. She swallowed back the words, frustrated with her own inability to say things with such ease the way Jaime seemed to. “I have always thought that I was not made to be loved.”

“Everyone is made to be loved. You more than most, I think.”

She rolled her eyes at him, and he smiled at her for it.

“I only meant…” But her words died in her throat as she tried to voice them. The old objections. She was too ugly. Too tall. She was not a true lady, not meant to be a wife. She knew what he would say to that. It surprised her, the suddenness of understanding. She knew what he would say, because she knew _him_. She wasn’t doing herself _or_ him any favors by refusing to listen to the words he spoke.

She trusted him. She loved him. She _knew_ him. She had prepared herself for the inevitability of his leaving because it _was_ inevitable, and because she did not know how to accept anything else. It simply could not be something as simple as a love returned. That wasn’t the way things worked for women who were not beautiful.

But that was such a horrible way to see the world, and it wasn’t the way _she_ saw the world at all. It was her septa’s voice. It was the taunts of men who had hated her for being strong and hated her for not being beautiful. It was the simpering false politeness of ladies who looked at her and thanked the gods that they weren’t born with her face and her body.

Jaime was not one of those horrible men, and he was not one of those horrible ladies. Jaime was Jaime, and he was her friend and her companion and the man she loved, and she did him a disservice in always assuming he would become those nightmares in the end.

If it was Sansa or Robb or Podrick who came to her and said that Jaime would leave, would dishonor her, would flee to help his sister because he loved her and could not do anything else, she would tell them that they were wrong. Why was she any different?

 _Ser Jaime is an honorable man_ , she thought, looking down at him. _He chose to follow you. He chose to stay to fight the dead. He wanted you near during the battle. He protected you. How can you not see the care in his eyes_?

It was easier when she stood apart from herself. Argued for Jaime’s honor the way she would have argued against anyone who questioned it.

_He cares for you as a friend. You cannot doubt that. And you know that he has taken pride in only ever loving his sister. He would not claim love for you if he wasn’t sure. He would keep it to himself out of pride and stubbornness if he wasn’t sure. He would not want to hurt you._

“What did you mean, Brienne?” he asked, and she suddenly found the words.

“It isn’t easy for me to believe you,” she said. “And it may feel as if it is _because_ of you, but it isn’t. If it were any other man, I wouldn’t trust him either. It’s only _because_ it’s you that I’ve given it any thought at all. You would not say something like that to hurt me. Or to- to deceive me. That isn’t your way.”

“It isn’t,” Jaime confirmed. The storm on his brow was lessening, and Brienne felt a tightness in her chest begin to loosen. She was never one for fixing things with her words. They always seemed to make things worse, in her experience, but this was something she _could_ fix. It was a comforting thought, perhaps a thrilling one. It was also terrifying; she could make it worse with her words, too.

“I fear that you will return to her because it’s the way I have always known the world to work. Women like me…we don’t keep men like you.” She swallowed, steeled herself. “When I was younger, my septa tried to prepare me, and she told me that I would be lucky to find a husband who could endure me for the reward of Tarth. I saw nothing in the years that followed that would have proven her wrong. But you…” She kept her hand still on his chest, and he waited. Uncommonly, uncharacteristically patient with her. “You don’t need an island.”

“I don’t,” Jaime breathed, relieved. He could see, perhaps, that she was starting to understand herself better.

“And yet you persist.”

“Which must tell you something about your septa.”

She smiled. She couldn’t help it. He smiled back.

“It might tell me something about you.”

“I’ve never been a normal man.”

“No. You haven’t.” She sighed. “I don’t disbelieve you to hurt you, Jaime. I simply need time.”

“You’ll have it,” he replied. Firm. Pleased with himself and with her. She wanted to touch him, and she knew that she could, so she did. She cupped his jaw in one hand. She looked at him. He promised her time, and patience. She feared that she could not promise him anything but that she would _try_. Maybe that would be enough.

Jaime meant to stay. He meant to love her. He meant to forsake his sister. She knew that, even if she could not banish the mean little voice inside her that insisted that the odds were that he would turn his back on his newfound certainty and go back to the woman he had loved for all his life. The voice that said it was impossible for a man who loved as passionately as Jaime to turn his back on a woman like Cersei.

He was standing before her, and he was leaning into her touch, and she had wanted to touch him for so long. She had thought to protect herself by staying away, but that was a fool’s hope, wasn’t it? She had already been pierced. Her armor had already been compromised. Pulling the blade out at this point would not prevent her from bleeding out. It would only kill her faster.

 _He will leave_ , she told herself, and she leaned in slowly, and she pressed a tentative kiss to his lips. He seemed to sag against her in one moment and then push against her in the next, backing her up against the wall. Her fingers were tugging him forward by the back of his neck, and he whimpered deep in his throat and kissed her.

 _I trust you_ , he had said to her once, in the baths. And she had learned to trust him in turn.

 _I still trust him_ , she told herself, as she kissed him and wondered how many more kisses and how many more gentle touches she would get until he was gone. _I still trust him. I do._ Jaime was smiling against her mouth. _Thank the gods_ , he murmured. _I love you_. And she still could not say that she believed him fully, but she kissed his smile soundly all the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the songs for this chapter are You can Love Me by the Boxer Rebellion and Dust to Dust by the Civil Wars


	72. Sansa XIII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa and Robb have an important discussion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will probably be one other chapter today, MAYBE two!

Sansa had been dreading this moment since the morning of the funerals.

She’d been dreading it in the back of her mind since before that, really, but it had been easier to push that worry away when everything else was so _important_. The funerals for the dead. Planning for the rebuilding of the damaged castle walls. The _cleaning_ of the castle: all that blood and all those discarded bandages and all the mess that had gathered in every corner when everyone else was too occupied with the business of staying alive during the battle. There were the plans to evacuate the wounded to White Harbor and Riverrun and Pyke while the army marched on Kings Landing. There were arguments about how much of a garrison should remain in the north while the rest of them were marching south. There were only so many hours in the day, and so many of those hours were full of important things. Perhaps she was looking for reasons to avoid having a conversation she was dreading, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true.

She was _always_ busy, and Robb was the same. She saw her brother only in passing moments. He was often sequestered with Daenerys and her advisors, planning the march. He would come to them at meals, sometimes, and he would kiss Sansa on the side of the head the same way he always did, but she could not bring herself to speak the words when there was risk of being overheard. Except then days had passed after the battle, and there was no chance to speak with him alone. She saw _Tyrion_ more than she saw Robb; Tyrion often relayed messages and plans from the war party as they passed each other in the hall. He was always kind and courteous, with a distance between them that Sansa appreciated. She saw _Jaime_ still more often. He took frequent walks with her as his wound healed, relying on her arm to keep him steady. She bullied him into practicing his writing with his offhand in her solar as she worked on her embroidery, making new gifts for her family to replace what had been lost. And even when they weren’t alone, he was rarely far from Brienne, who was rarely far from Sansa. He had taken to sharing private midday meals with them in Sansa’s solar, and Brienne would blush furiously through every insinuation that she plainly thought Sansa didn’t pick up on. Sansa thought they were very annoying, but she was happy for them.

Arya was still teaching her how to defend herself—pointing out that a man could kill her easily, even if it wouldn’t be quite as disgusting as a wight. And Bran didn’t seem to _like_ anything, really, but he seemed interested in their conversations at dinner, at least, so Sansa made sure to find time to talk with him. He still made her uncomfortable, but he was her brother, and she _did_ love him.

And Jon. She didn’t get to spend as much time with Jon as she would have liked. It wasn’t like during the battle, where she could pull him into a room and kiss him and then hold him as he slept. They’d had precious little time to themselves. Someone was always looking for one of them, and there was always a risk that they would be discovered.

It made her think of Jaime and Cersei again, but the comparison didn’t make her skin too tight the way it used to. She still didn’t _like_ to understand Cersei so well, especially not about something like this, but knowing Jaime and caring about Jaime helped. It helped her see what Cersei must have seen, and it helped her feel better about it. Understanding Cersei, even being _like_ Cersei in some ways, didn’t mean she was like her in _every_ way. Not everything they shared was a sign of rot within her. Not every lesson Cersei had imparted was one that Sansa needed to smother out of herself for fear of it bearing some poisonous fruit.

Sansa had already, of course, spoken about Jon to Jaime. Jaime was an easy person to talk to, because he talked so much, and because he had a way of setting her at ease in doing it. She never felt too worried that he would judge her. How could he? He’d made far worse choices for love.

She’d had a wish at first to talk to Brienne, but she had found that she was more afraid of what her other sworn sword would think about it. Not that Brienne would ever say anything, but she was such an honorable woman. She had fallen for Jaime despite his earlier choices, but she had hated him for them first. She had a way of looking at the world that was sturdy and comforting and sometimes seemed _naïve_ to Sansa. It wasn’t always a bad thing, but it made Sansa nervous. She didn’t want to see disappointment in her sworn sword’s eyes. Her _friend’s_ eyes. Disappointment. Confusion. Disgust. She didn’t want to see those things in Robb’s eyes, either, but at least with Robb…

Well, he had already disappointed _Sansa_ more than once. She didn’t feel so guilty disappointing him in turn. Not like she would feel with Brienne, who had never done anything to hurt her.

“We’re going to be wed,” she said to Jaime, who whistled out lowly and leaned back in his seat. It was just the two of them in Sansa’s solar. Tyrion had been there, too, but he’d left to attend a meeting with Daenerys. Brienne was helping with the rebuilding efforts outside. Both Jaime and Sansa had tried to persuade her to take a rest, but she wouldn’t. The men shoring up the walls needed her strength, and so that was what she would give them.

Technically, it was probably improper for Sansa and Jaime to be alone in her solar like this, but the war had done away with most of their capacity to care about such things. And besides, none of their friendship had been proper so far. Writing him letters. Stitching clothing for him. Befriending him at all despite the things he had done to her family. It hadn’t been proper for her to tear open his shirt and stitch his skin together, but she had done that, too, and she had done it to hundreds of men during the fighting. It was harder to care about it now. Who cared about propriety when the dead had been vanquished? Everyone was already joking about the number of bastards who would be born; Jon had petitioned Daenerys and Robb to see that they would be legitimized, arguing that the circumstances should not mean that the children would grow up saddled with a bastard’s name because their parents were fighting to save the world and looking for a little comfort while they did it.

“If you had said that to me only a year ago, I would have been mad with jealousy,” Jaime said, in the thoughtful voice he always used when he was about to make a very annoying joke. “Marrying your sibling.”

“He’s my cousin. _Please_ don’t be like this.” Jaime laughed at her.

“Yes, your cousin. Of course. But he was your brother first.”

“I don’t know why I thought I could talk to you about it.”

“Because you know you have to talk to your _true_ brother about it, and you thought I would make handy practice? Or perhaps because you know that I’m the only person who can’t judge you harshly for it.”

“Well,” she admitted quietly. “There _is_ that.”

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think Robb will judge you too harshly either. He knows what it’s like to fall in love with someone he shouldn’t, same as me. He might have his doubts and his fears about you actually _marrying_ the lad, because his first marriage was such a colossal mistake. But I don’t think he’ll be so disgusted as you think.”

Jaime had a unique talent for japing in one moment and then turning serious in the next, and it always managed to disarm her. It made his words land harder than they would have otherwise. That and his sympathetic gaze made her feel stronger, more ready to face it.

She was still nervous to speak to Robb, but she was glad for the confidence that Jaime’s support gave her. He was perhaps the worst possible example to use for normalcy, but he had not been disgusted or confused or wary. He had been so lately regretful of his former relationship with his sister. Surely, if he thought it was a mistake, he would show it in some way. For the length of their friendship, he hadn’t hesitated to be open with her, even when it was mocking and just a bit mean. And he _liked_ her. She knew he did. If he truly thought that Robb was going to stand in the way, he would have told her. To prepare her, if nothing else.

It also helped to speak to him because of the reminder it gave her that she and Jon truly were nothing like he and Cersei. If they had never been revealed as cousins, she was sure that they never would have acted on their feelings. She never would have even _admitted_ them. She would have carried her shame close, certain that she was the only one who felt what she felt. She would have withdrawn from Jon completely. She would have done her best to force herself to move on. Maybe she would have even been successful. That was the difference between the Starks and the Lannisters, and she knew that Jaime would laugh scornfully at her if she pointed it out, but she knew he would also have to admit that, all things considered, the Stark method was probably best.

The Stark method also meant that this conversation with Robb was _important._

_If he disapproves…_

She couldn’t think beyond that, though. Not yet. Not until it was hopeless. The Night King was dead. The armies had survived. The upcoming war with Kings Landing was nothing in comparison. She had so much to be grateful and thankful for. She should not assume the worst.

Still, standing in front of Robb’s office, she found that she had to bolster up the courage to knock.

Jon was determined to do things the right way, not wanting his father’s legacy to echo here, with her, to bring her dishonor. She wanted the same. She wanted to be wed. She wanted to do things properly. But it was difficult when she missed him so much. It would be nice to sleep beside him every night. Robb and Daenerys always seemed so happy and well rested in the morning, and Jaime had grumbled more than once about missing Brienne’s presence by his side at night. Sansa still wasn’t used to the idea of a man in her bed being a good thing. It had only been terror before. But with Jon…she felt safe with Jon. She wanted him nearby always.

Her wanting was what gave her the courage to knock on the door to Robb’s office at last, and when he called for her to enter, she took in a sharp breath and opened the door. She wanted. She would not stop wanting, and she had a chance to _have_. Jon wanted her too. Arya didn’t hate them for it. Bran didn’t hate them either. It was only Robb who stood in the way, and she would never know how much of an obstacle he would be unless she spoke to him.

“Sansa,” he said happily when she entered. He always sounded so glad to see her, especially since the fall of the Night King. His relief made him boyish again, more like the Robb she remembered from before they left Winterfell. Less haunted and hollow than the man who had returned from Riverrun before the war. 

She had been wary about Robb when he fell for Daenerys after promising that he would not make the same mistakes again, but she couldn’t deny that Daenerys was good for him. Even putting aside that she had helped _everyone,_ the dragon queen had helped _him._ He had seemed more whole since he had married her, as if Daenerys had filled a void that Sansa had not realized had been in her brother until it was gone and Robb was Robb again. As she saw him smiling at her from behind his desk, getting to his feet to greet her, she tried to remember that. He was still her brother. He was a good man. He might judge her. He might be uncomfortable with this new direction for she and Jon. But he would understand that it wasn’t always a choice, and he would want her and Jon to be happy.

_Please let him understand._

“I need to speak with you,” she said.

“Of course,” Robb said, and his forehead creased with nervousness, picking up on her own. She sat down at the table across from him. He sat as well, watching her carefully.

“I don’t know how to start,” she admitted, and he smiled a little.

“Start wherever you’re most comfortable,” he said, and she nodded.

“I suppose…I want you to know that this is not something new. Not on my part. It’s been happening since before I knew you were alive. And I…” She hated herself for the way her voice shook, but she couldn’t help it. She felt like a child again. “I didn’t mean for it to happen. I didn’t want it to happen. I still don’t quite understand it, but…” She took a deep breath, and Robb was still looking at her with an encouraging, worried smile, and all she could think was that he was going to stop, soon. “I’m in love with Jon,” she said.

She knew how that must sound coming from her. It must first of all sound impossible, but more than that it must sound absurd. As a girl she claimed to be in love with so many people. Waymar Royce. Joffrey. Anyone handsome enough to make her heart race faster. Anyone who could make her feel like she was in a song or one of Old Nan’s stories. When she met Robb’s eyes, she could see that he _was_ confused. Like he was sure he must have heard wrong.

“What?” he finally asked, and she sighed, and she clenched her hands in her lap. She had been adamant to Jon that she wanted to do this alone, because she thought Robb would be less angry if only one of them spoke to him about it, and because she knew that of the two of them she was vastly more likely to be able to get the right words out. But apparently she had overestimated herself, because she froze and stared at him for far too long before she finally spoke.

“I am,” she whispered. “I’m in love with Jon. I know how it sounds.”

“I’m not sure you do,” Robb argued with a crooked grin.

“I do. Believe me. I’ve agonized over it for moons, Robb.” He was looking more serious now that he realized that this wasn’t a prank or him somehow misunderstanding what she was saying. “I thought…at first I thought that it was just…no one had been kind to me in so long. Just Brienne, and Theon, I suppose, and Podrick. But Jon…Jon promised to do anything for me. He promised to help me. He was fighting for me. I thought maybe that was all it was. That it was getting mixed up in my mind. That first day at Castle Black…he gave me his cloak, and he fed me stew, and he kept me _safe_. I hadn’t felt safe with anyone in so long. He was so _kind_. And I thought, after that, whenever I started to feel…I thought that it was just because I had been broken, and everyone else had been so unkind, but not Jon. Jon was always…kind.”

_You’re saying_ kind _too much,_ she thought, but what better word was there? Wondrous. Beautiful. Everything. She couldn’t say those things to Robb. He would never understand. She was lucky he was even listening to _this_ much.

“He always was,” Robb pointed out. “And you never…”

“No,” Sansa admitted. “I was too stupid to see it then. And the more time we spent together…I thought, then, that maybe it was Cersei. Maybe Cersei broke me. I did everything to hide it. I couldn’t let him know, or anyone know, because it meant that I was just like Cersei. I was broken, and there was no other explanation.”

“Sansa,” Robb said, pity and empathy and understanding in his tone.

“I was with her for so long,” Sansa said. “It would only make sense.”

“No, Sansa. You’re nothing like her.”

“You didn’t know her,” Sansa pointed out. She couldn’t help but smile. She was glad at least that his instinct was still to try and make her feel better, and not to flinch away from her like she had been half convinced he would. “I _am_ like her, in some ways. Not in all ways, but…I thought maybe it was just…too many ways.” _Gods_ , she sounded like an idiot. She had been so sure that she could do this.

“I don’t need to know Cersei to know you. I know what my soldiers have said about you during the long night. I know that you held them all together, and that when the dead were coming over the walls, you and Missandei lead the prayers instead of escaping through the crypts. I don’t think Cersei would have done that.”

Sansa nodded. She stood up. She paced to the window and looked outside, because it was easier to look out at the snow and remember that she was still safe in Winterfell. She closed her eyes.

“It wasn’t Cersei, anyway,” she said. “I don’t think that anymore. And then Jon was our cousin.” She sighed and turned to face him, and she saw that Robb had turned to watch her. It was impossible to read his expression. “And suddenly it…I could think about it. I couldn’t talk about it, but I didn’t feel so much like…I was never very close to him before. I wasn’t really a true sister to him, and he wasn’t a true brother. It was more like having feelings for Theon than it was like having feelings for _you_. I told myself all those things. Over and over again, I tried to make it make sense to myself. Tried to stop _hating_ myself for it. Because it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter, because Jon would never think of me that way. He was _Jon_.”

“Sansa,” Robb said, alarmed, sitting up straighter.

“He’s asked me to marry him,” Sansa said. She kept her posture straight, and she kept her gaze steady. This was so important. This was the most vital part. _Please_ , she wanted to say. _Please understand_. “I love him, and he loves me. I would have kept it to myself forever, and he would have done the same. But Arya guessed how I felt. She…she knew that I was lying about thinking of him as a brother, still, and I had to tell her. I couldn’t let her believe that I _hated_ him. And I don’t know how she managed to get it out of Jon, but she _did_. When the dead were on their way, she told Jon to talk to me. I know how it sounds. I know how it must look to you, but there hasn’t been anything…we haven’t done anything about it. And we _won’t_. If you think it’s too abhorrent, if you tell me now that you can’t support it…we won’t.” Her gut sank at the thought, but it was true. They’d talked about that, too. It was more important for them to be united as a family. As much as it would hurt to turn him aside, it was the only option.

“I can’t lie and say that I’m comfortable with it,” Robb admitted quietly. “But you’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” she said. “I wouldn’t lie about this.”

“I almost wish you were.”

“I know.”

“And Arya…supports this?”

“I don’t know if I’d go that far, but she’s…different, from how she was. She sees things differently. She didn’t think there was any sense in us torturing ourselves when we felt the same way.”

Robb nodded. He was staring at her so intently. She let him. She didn’t know what he could possibly see just from looking at her, but if he saw _anything_ , she hoped it would be her love. She hoped he would be able to see it.

“I assume Bran knows, too.”

“He does.”

“And he supports it?”

“As much as he can support anything.”

“Right,” Robb sighed. “So it comes down to me.”

“It does,” Sansa said. Robb frowned, and he stared down at the desk. She could not tell what he was going to say. It could be anything. She would understand anything.

“And you _want_ to marry him?” Robb asked. “Even knowing what people will say?”

“Yes,” she answered. She had thought of that, of course. She had found that she didn’t care. There was an echo of it, of shame and of wanting to please everyone. But it wasn’t nearly as strong as her love.

“Let me talk to Daenerys,” Robb said. “To see how best to present it to the northern lords. She might have some ideas. But if it’s what you want, Sansa, of _course_ I’ll support it.”

Sansa sagged with relief, and Robb smiled. He still looked uncomfortable, and she couldn’t blame him for that. He wasn’t angry, and he hadn’t reacted with disgust. He was quizzical at worst. The boy he used to be would have been furious, she knew. He would have refused to even talk about it. But the man he had become understood better that the heart didn’t always follow the rules.

“Thank you, Robb,” she said. Robb got to his feet, and he held his arms out, and she went to him. She hugged him gratefully. Her big brother. It was the first time in days that the thought of him wasn’t frightening to her at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Direction by Hugh


	73. Cersei V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cersei tries to figure out Tyrion's letters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2 chapters today, coming right after one another. I'm having a surprisingly busy day at work (on my couch), so I wanted to get these done so I can focus on that!

The third letter from Tyrion was plainly designed to infuriate her, which meant that the first two must have been the same.

Her little brother could pretend all he wanted with his pretty words. He had always been good at that, at pretending that he didn’t hate her. Pretending at hurt feelings. Pretending at empathy instead of the savage glee that she knew he felt every time she was hurt or upset. He had grown better at it than ever, now that he served the dragon queen and stood openly against Cersei instead of just working against her from the shadows the way he used to. His letter dripped with insincere hopes that she would _listen to reason_.

_Step down,_ he wrote. _And Daenerys will be merciful. You have done nothing to her, but if you stand in her way, she will take the throne by force. Please, sister, listen to me. This is not a battle you can win, and you will only make things worse for yourself._

Cersei knew better than to believe him. Oh, she believed, in a distant sort of way, that he was telling her the truth; Qyburn’s spies had told her that much, at least. The size of the Targaryen girl’s army was impossible to overcome, and there were of course the dragons. _This is not a battle you can win_ had a ring of truth to it, even though it made her think of Jaime and that slump of his shoulders that she had so hated near the end.

But Tyrion’s pleading, his use of _sister._ His assumption that she was a weak, quailing thing that would flee her throne at the first sign of trouble. He didn’t want to talk her down. He wanted to incite her. He wanted her to _burn_. He knew that she would do the exact opposite of what he recommended. He was _counting_ on it.

Weeks ago, when she’d received news of the march north from Dragonstone, she hadn’t known what to make of it. Qyburn’s news was often bolstered by gossip, and the tales that surrounded the dragon queen’s northern journey were impossible ones. And yet the more gossip he brought, the more it made sense. What else would take the dragon queen so far north when her enemy remained in Kings Landing? What else but a bigger enemy?

Euron had sailed his ships back to Pyke to try and retake them, but there had been enough Ironborn to repel him. Cersei had flirted with the idea of sending part of her force to Highgarden, or perhaps to Riverrun to take it back, but she feared a trap. Qyburn’s whispers said that a large, defenseless force of the dragon queen’s people were clustered in the Riverlands, guarded only by a diminished Tully force, and perhaps that was true. But perhaps it was a rumor designed to draw her armies out, and she could not fall for it. Too many had been lost at Highgarden, and there were worse rumors about _that_ , too.

Rumors about men in Lannister armor marching north with the dragon queen.

She had seethed and fumed and demanded answers from Qyburn, but every bit of evidence he brought her seemed less likely than the news he brought before. They were _her_ men. They belonged to her family, to her army. She was the _queen_. She was the most important Lannister left. Jaime had been captured, but these men, these traitors, Qyburn said that they marched of their own power. They supped with the Dothraki screamers and the Unsullied eunuchs that made up the dragon queen’s forces. They pitched their tents beside northmen. They trained with Robb Stark.

She had refused to believe it at first, and she had ordered those rumors quelled, but… Like everything else, she couldn’t escape them in the dark. When she lay awake in bed and failed to sleep, thinking of every enemy who stood against her. When she was a powerless queen, married to Robert, she had lain awake and seethed about everything that she wanted to do. But even then she had slept better than this. The weight of the kingdom was heavy on her shoulders now. Maybe that was why Robert started drinking so much. Maybe that was why he threw the work to Jon Arryn and found his release in whores and servant girls.

Cersei _tried_. She drank when it pleased her. She gave Qyburn more duties with the council. She scarcely even knew the _names_ of the men on her council. Men who stammered when they talked to her and stared over her shoulder at The Mountain. They had nothing interesting to say, and nothing to offer. Euron lurked with his promises and his demands, and she put him off and sent him away and found reasons for him to leave the city to collect more news. He allowed it, because he thought he was backing her into a corner. She thought he was a jester of a man, and she would have The Mountain tear his arms from his body if he ever tried to touch her. She would take the horn herself. She would no longer be beholden to men like him.

She took notice of a pretty girl among her handmaidens. A girl with unlined skin and high cheekbones and a smirking way of curtseying to her queen. Knowing and wanting and doing a poor job of trying to conceal it; Cersei recognized the look. She used to see it on men all the time.

The girl almost looked like Margaery Tyrell, with her pouting lips and her falsely innocent expression. Cersei kissed her with the taste of wine on her tongue, and the handmaiden responded in kind.

She was nothing like Jaime. Nothing like Robert, either, or Lancel, or any man Cersei had ever touched. But it was Jaime she was used to thinking of when she was with anyone else, and she couldn’t do that with this girl. She wondered if Robert closed his eyes and thought of Lyanna every time he rutted against whichever woman would endure him. Or had it not mattered? Cersei tried not to make it matter. Even her father had lain with that whore of Tyrion’s. Why should Cersei not?

When the girl was between her legs, licking into her, Cersei could almost pretend, but it still wasn’t quite enough. The handmaiden had the good sense to leave when they were done, and she had the even better sense not to say anything the next morning, or exchange any heated looks. Cersei liked it, this secret, this willing girl in her bed. Wylla was happy to please, and that alone satisfied Cersei more than she would have expected.

She wondered how many of Robert’s whores had been named Wylla. Probably more than one. It was a common enough name, and Wylla was probably a common enough girl. Had Robert ever cared how common they were?

_Was this what he felt_? She wondered it often, watching Wylla work, watching the way her hair dipped over her face, and the way her lithe limbs moved. Wylla was eager to please, and eager to teach, and Cersei enjoyed her company. Was that all it was? Was that what men sought? A willing woman to warm their bed? Was _that_ what turned them into such hungry, grasping monsters?

* * *

Tyrion’s raven was the first true news Cersei had received from the north in weeks. She’d had her tales from Qyburn’s spies, and she’d heard plenty of the rumors that were spreading unchecked in taverns and brothels in Kings Landing. She had dismissed those at first as fanciful notions of a frightened and confused populace who could no more figure out a reason for the dragon queen’s journey north than _she_ could. It was spreading panic. Needless panic that only made her job more difficult. Her goldcloaks reported daily totals of the people who had been killed trying to escape through the tunnels beneath the city, but no one could tell her how many of them were successful. That rabbit warren of passages was impossible to stop up completely. Fewer mouths to feed should have been a good thing, but people _talked_ , and the smallfolk weren’t all complete fools. They would tell her enemies what they had found there, beneath the streets.

She’d sent some sellswords to range out and take back as many of her people as they could, but her options were limited. She paid them in food rather than gold, and they were all desperate, starving men who claimed they would do anything. But you could only trust desperation so far. She knew they would fail to bring her back all of those who had escaped.

The captain of her goldcloaks had been afraid to speak it plainly, but she had seen it in the way he evaded her eye when she sent the sellswords out. She had imagined him trying to pull the same evasion with Tywin, and her lip had curled, but she had swallowed back her rage. The man had been loyal to her so far. These days, that meant more than it used to.

_So many enemies_ , Jaime’s voice reminded her. She couldn’t afford to keep throwing away loyalty. Whether their slights against her were real or imagined, she needed them. She needed to control herself.

_It’s too late. It’s too late for that_. An endless, panicked refrain inside her mind. She ignored it. Stuffed it down violently. She couldn’t let it speak.

She’d had some of the re-captured escapees brought to her in the throne room, and she’d had them speak before the court. They had been weak, whimpering things, men and women and children alike reduced to an animal submission. It had angered her more than their escape attempts had, but she had gotten some answers.

“A threat from beyond the Wall,” they all said. And they thought that _they_ would join the fight. Untrained peasants from Flea Bottom with no weapons but broom handles and cooking pots. A few years ago, Cersei would have laughed pleasantly at the picture, and her court would have laughed with her. She didn’t have it in her anymore, and the people who surrounded her would not laugh until she did. It was silent in the throne room. Silent but for the muffled whimper of a child whose mother was trying desperately to keep it quiet. Cersei looked away. She did not think of her own children.

“This again?” she asked Qyburn, as if their tales could be so easily dismissed. “The same rumors.”

She picked several of the ringleaders to hang from the battlements, and she provided bread and meat for the rest, sending them back to their homes.

She felt a real pity for them, for the ringleaders and for those foolish sheep who had followed them. It was a momentary thing. A flash of it smothered beneath everything else.

It wasn’t _their_ fault, after all. They, even those men who thought it had been their own idea, had been led by schemers probably sent to them by Tyrion. Tyrion wanted to recruit people for the army of the dragon queen, where she gathered strength in the north. Of _course_ that was it. What else would it be? They would make a poor army, but they would make an excellent frontline of disposable soldiers before the dragon queen’s Unsullied and Dothraki rode in. 

She thought of the rumors they’d whispered only late that night, as she lay alone in her big bed. She thought of how much more sense those rumors made than every excuse she conjured to explain what was happening. She thought of Jaime, and she wondered what Jaime would say, and it angered her further because she thought she knew. It was only at night that she was honest with herself enough to understand exactly what she had lost.

It had been weeks of that, of waiting and gathering what strength she could claw from the red stones of her city. Weeks of listening to Qyburn’s rumors and weeks of putting out every small fire that started in Flew Bottom so that it would not grow into a flame. Weeks of silence from the north, and then the first letter from Tyrion. It was overlong and overwordy, like all of his letters were, and it spoke of a massive battle between a nearly-unified Westeros and the armies of the dead, come from beyond the Wall to exterminate human life. Led by something called the Night King, which was the stupidest part of an already stupid lie. Cersei had nearly laughed and cast the letter into the fire without reading the whole of it. But there had to be _some_ reason that Tyrion had written it, and so she had kept it. She would pull it out some nights, read it again. She would try to figure out _why_ he had sent it. What was the trap he hoped to lead her into? What was the point of writing her at all? Why _this_ lie? Why _this_ story? She couldn’t understand it, and it only made her angrier every time she failed.

Then, only days after the first, a second letter arrived.

Tyrion this time wrote of the heavy losses that the north and the dragon queen had suffered. To lull Cersei into a false sense of security? But he also wrote of the strength of the queen’s remaining dragons and how she still had more than enough manpower to defeat Cersei and remove her from the Red Keep by force. A threat, but why? Why brag of their strength so soon after complaining of their losses? She couldn’t figure it out. Did he want her to believe the boast? Or did he want her to believe the professions of weakness? It was impossible to say, and so she kept _that_ letter, too, trying to figure out _why_ he had sent them.

The third letter, Cersei _did_ cast into the fire.

_Step down. And Daenerys will be merciful. You have done nothing to her, but if you stand in her way, she will take the throne by force. Please, sister, listen to me. This is not a battle you can win, and you will only make things worse for yourself._

_For the sake of our family, for the love that I still have for you as my sister, my blood, I beg you. Daenerys has given our brother an honored place in her army for the loyalty he has shown her. It was Jaime who drove his sword through the heart of the Night King and ended the terror. They call him Kingslayer now with smiles instead of sneers. He fought honorably alongside Lady Arya Stark and Lady Brienne of Tarth. He knighted the latter on the eve of battle, and soon you will hear songs sung of it in taverns, even so far south. Some of them are quite good._

_Daenerys will consider all of this if you surrender and do not try to cause her further grief. She trusts our brother, and she trusts me. Neither of us wish for you to suffer. Please, Cersei. Understand that you have already lost. It is only your suffering now which is in question._

* * *

Cersei paced in her room after reading it. She had sent for Wylla, and expected her soon enough, but until then she had to pace and hate and have no outlet for the heat that simmered beneath her skin. She had always wanted Jaime most when she was like this. When she was angry. When she was helpless. She wanted him because he was the one thing that she chose. And now. And _now._

Tyrion had to be lying. She was _sure_ he was lying. Jaime wouldn’t betray her like that.

And yet…

_Brienne of Tarth._ That foolish cow of a woman. She’d been in love with Jaime years ago. Cersei had seen it. Of _course_ she had. The girl’s eyes had followed him wherever he went, and yet she had the gall to look _shocked_ by Cersei’s accusation, as if she hadn’t known herself until Cersei made it plain. If it was obvious to Cersei, it must have been equally obvious to her twin, and Jaime had always been so starved, so hungry to be wanted. It would have been a simple thing for Jaime to secure it. A few pretty words, a few chaste kisses. Perhaps he had already bedded her, tied her to him completely. She’d never stop loving him if he had thrown her down and treated her like the lady she would never be. The Tarth woman was ugly, but perhaps her adoration was enough to make up for what she lacked. It was easy enough to close your eyes and imagine a more wanted face. Cersei had done it a thousand times.

Because who could be more loyal or more devoted than a hideous, enormous woman who was too ugly to hope for anything else? Jaime was beautiful. Impossibly beautiful. The beauty of songs and paintings. Brienne of Tarth would _worship_ Jaime, and that was all Jaime had ever wanted. To be adored. To be followed. To be listened to. He was always so resentful of Cersei’s power and Cersei’s intelligence. He wanted her soft and willing. That was what men wanted, wasn’t it? A sweet young wife who would listen to them blindly? Cersei had never been that. _That_ was why Robert had wanted his whores. Men loved the fantasy of a woman who had no will of her own. She had thought Jaime was different. She had thought that Jaime understood her. Loved her. Wanted her because of her passion and her hate and everything about her.

Obviously, Jaime was weaker than she had once believed.

Her mind still railed against it, even though it made too much sense to be denied.

_No, no. He would never follow such a woman. He would never abandon me. He must have been forced somehow. Or maybe…_

A brightness, suddenly. Sun through the clouds. _Maybe._ Maybe he was biding his time. Maybe he was playing the part of the good little prisoner just as she had once played the part of the good little wife. He was waiting until he could make his escape, and then he would return. He had stayed and fought in the war for honor, because of course he had. He’d always been so desperate to be the good knight, as much as he pretended it didn’t bother him that men scorned him in the streets and called him _oathbreaker._ But he would never fight for Daenerys Targaryen against Cersei. He would never love Brienne of Tarth when Cersei existed. He would never choose to stand by the side of people like Olenna Tyrell and _Sansa Stark_ , of all people. He would not stand with people who had harmed her. He would wait, and he would do what was necessary, and then he would return to her.

Yes. Of course that was it. What else would it be? Jaime would never betray her. He loved her. He was the other half of her soul.

“I want the cow dead,” she said to Qyburn, later. She had left Wylla naked and waiting in her rooms, and it gave her a thrill of power to know it. Was _this_ what Robert had felt? Was _this_ it? Or was there something else that she was still missing? She had strode down to Qyburn’s office. He was there, among missives and piles of gold and larger piles of warnings from the Iron Bank.

Her Hand looked tired and old in a way he rarely did.

“Daenerys?” he guessed. “Or perhaps Sansa Stark?’

Cersei tilted her head to one side in acknowledgement.

“I would not say no to any of them,” she admitted with a small smile. “But I meant the Lady Brienne. Of Tarth.”

“Your brother’s protector,” Qyburn said with surprise.

“Protector? Is that what she called herself?” Lady Brienne had been her brother’s jailer once. Cersei had wanted her executed for it; Jaime had lost his hand under her watch. He had refused to entertain the idea.

“It’s what _he_ called her,” Qyburn said. That only made her stomach roil more, and she turned away.

“Whatever she is, I want her dead,” she said. “Jaime cannot be seen to have divided loyalties. He must be loyal to the crown. He is, of course, trying to get back here, but I doubt Brienne of Tarth is making that very easy, and I will not have my brother the target of disgusting rumors. I want her dead. The faceless men…”

“We cannot afford faceless men,” Qyburn said shortly. “And even if we could, they have refused to work with us.”

“ _What_?” Cersei whirled on him.

“You asked me to look into it,” Qyburn reminded her slowly, in a tone that she did not like. “And I did. They know that the crown is deeply in debt with the Iron Bank. They won’t work with us. Even if we _could_ pay them upfront, which we can’t, they would refuse. There are sellswords, of course, who might be willing to take on the job, but I don’t think they’d have much luck against the lady. You’d be throwing away the gold, and we can’t afford that.”

Cersei sneered and spun on her heel. The quiver of fear that she felt at the thought, she banished quickly. No, she wouldn’t be afraid. She didn’t need the faceless men. She didn’t need Brienne of Tarth dead at all. Her Golden Company would take care of the Tarth bitch quite nicely, and Jaime would be back with her. They could save the expense. She didn’t _need_ assassins. She would tell her men to focus on the woman when the war arrived. It shouldn’t be hard. She cast quite a large shadow.

“The money,” she said. She refused to look at Qyburn, not wanting him to see how worried she was. “Why is this the first time I’m hearing of this?”

“I have spoken to you of the Iron Bank before,” he said. His voice flat and neutral, and she knew the disdain that hid behind it. “But you did not want to hear it.”

Cersei rolled her eyes, and she looked out the window to the view of the gardens outside. She felt the pull of her throne, but it repulsed her. She didn’t want to sit on it today. That was a surprise. She remembered how much Robert had hated it. Complaining of his duties and of his responsibilities and of the fact that the throne was so fucking uncomfortable. She’d always hated him for that. _If I was able_ , she would think. _I would sit on that throne every day. I would sit in audiences. I would rule my kingdom._

She didn’t want to. She wanted to return to her rooms. She wanted The Mountain at her door. She wanted soft, sweet Wylla in her bed. She wanted to understand what she was doing wrong, and she wanted to _forget_ what she was doing wrong. She wanted to forget all of this.

“I will worry about my debts when I know that I am going to remain queen,” she managed to say through clenched teeth. “For now, our concern must be in maintaining my rule.”

She turned and met Qyburn’s eyes, and this time the resentment was easy to read. He nodded. He bowed lower than he needed to. He cast Gregor Clegane one withering look. And then he turned and left her in his office alone. Always alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song for this chapter is In the End by 2WEI. lmao.


	74. Daenerys IX

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daenerys arranges for a private conversation with Jaime

They had delayed as much as they could, and things were already improved. Daenerys had feared stagnation in the days immediately following the end of the battle, but she was greatly reassured by the progress.

The most grievously wounded of the soldiers had either died or had healed enough that it was almost certain that they would live. The castle’s walls had not yet been fully restored, but its living areas had been cleaned and reappointed. The rooms were barer than they used to be; much of the furniture had been destroyed for kindling during the war. Many of the cots and piles of furs that used to invade every space had been moved to the army tents outside the walls. Winterfell would not be the same for quite some time, and it was still woefully overcrowded, but it felt less desperate than it used to.

Some of the armies had already begun the march south, led by Grey Worm and Davos together, but Dany and most of the principal commanders had remained in the north. Robb wanted to see things put to rights as much as possible in Winterfell before beginning the march south, and Tyrion had advised Daenerys to stay with her wounded as long as she could. If her marching armies needed her before then, she could move quickly on Drogon, but the people at Riverrun would not need her presence the way the people at Winterfell would.

So she had waited. She had helped. She had given them her time and her company and her men to help rebuild the walls. The work wasn’t done, but the repairs would continue when the armies were gone. Many of those who had served as nurses and porters during the fighting would stay and do the work. Northerners, most of them, though there were plenty of refugees from Kings Landing who had found a purpose in Winterfell and would choose to stay even once the fighting was over. Most of the Free Folk had elected to stay as well, rather than marching onward. Tyrion and Varys and Dany herself had argued against it, but Jon Snow would not be moved; he would not try to convince them to follow. Some of them _did_ choose, but those were their choices. The Free Folk did not decide as one.

It wasn’t what she was used to. Westeros itself wasn’t what she was used to. She had learned slowly over the past moons, and she had been forced to learn much more quickly during these past few weeks. Robb was a handy resource, as was Bran. Sansa and Arya, too. Daenerys had been used to consuming Westeros through the eyes of Jorah, and then Tyrion, and then Varys. There were Olenna and Yara and Ellaria. But the Starks had their own perspectives, and Daenerys liked to think of it as collecting. Collecting knowledge, collecting experience. There were so many different ways to see this continent that she hoped to rule. She had to accept that not all of them were going to be compatible.

She would not _need_ the Free Folk. She was quite sure of that, at least. They were good fighters, and it would have been good to have them, but they also weren’t _necessary_. Her armies had taken heavy losses in the fight against the dead, and the soldiers who remained were tired and haunted by war.

But Daenerys had her dragons. Nothing could stand against her so long as she had her dragons, even if it _was_ only two of them.

* * *

Daenerys met with Robb and Sansa and Jon and her own advisors, and they all declared that the time had come for them to leave. The food stores in Winterfell had been decimated, and their hunting parties still were not finding much of anything. There was evidence of an enormous wolf pack in the wood, and the hunters had begun to refuse to enter it, knowing how bold the hungry wolves were getting. What little food they still had would not last the armies much longer. The Greyjoy siblings and their people were still bringing fish in along the trade routes from White Harbor, and there would soon be more shipments from Dorne of fruits and hopefully pleasanter meat, but there was no telling how long that would take. They needed to get to Riverrun, where food was less scarce, even after years of war and banditry devastating the countryside. A host from The Vale would be waiting there, along with most of the people who had been evacuated before the start of the battle, and they would have brought as much as they could to supplement Riverrun’s stores.

It had been a long several weeks, filled with grief and healing, but Daenerys was feeling more even-keeled than she had been immediately after the battle. Losing Jorah and losing one of her children had been difficult enough, and the exhaustion of the days that preceded those losses had nearly swept her under entirely. She was glad now that they had taken the time. She was still eager to have it all finished, but Robb was right when he said that they needed to prepare for everything. Daenerys was still not convinced that Cersei’s army could be any threat to her dragons. She still felt so _close_ to her throne. But she would not have her legacy be that of a colossal mistake, rushing in when she did not need to.

One of their last days in Winterfell, she sent for Ser Jaime Lannister. She had avoided speaking to him for the weeks they had been in Winterfell. She had wanted to speak to him since Highgarden, but she found herself avoiding a private conference at every turn. She had allowed him to join her forces. She had spoken to him during planning sessions before the war, if offhandedly. He had come to her and Robb and told them about his sister’s wildfire stores, but he had spoken primarily to the northern king, and Daenerys had understood. She had used the opportunity to look her fill. He was older than she had always imagined him, and worn down by time. There was a part of her that was glad to see her father’s murderer looking so unwell, and yet there was a part of her that remembered Tyrion’s words: he hadn’t been the same, after killing Aerys. And Aerys had been mad. The Kingslayer had been young, then. Young and afraid. Daenerys understood that, if she understood little else.

Still, the idea of actually talking to him was a frightening one. Childish, maybe, but she _had been_ a child when she dreamed of him hunting her and Viserys across the sea. It was Viserys who frightened her, telling her tales meant to shake her confidence and make her more dependent on him. She still didn’t know if that had been his intention, or if he had just been cruel, knowing that the Kingslayer was one of Dany’s biggest fears. Childish fears, yes, but they had been the fears of a child.

She needed to squash them. She needed to thank him for ending the war against the dead. She needed to prove to him that she was not her father, and that she would not keep old grudges alive like Aerys probably would have.

More than that, she needed to know what he would do when they moved against his sister. The Lannister soldiers were a proud and driven lot, and they had proven themselves against the dead and during the long days that followed. They would choose to fight for her, she knew, but they respected their commander too much to move against him if he made a different sort of choice. She needed to know if she could count on them.

She couldn’t put it off any longer. They would be marching soon, and she would not be afraid to have the Kingslayer kept behind at Winterfell in the cells if she thought that it would stop him from trying to interfere. Sansa and Brienne would object, perhaps Tyrion as well, but Daenerys would be doing them a favor. If Jaime stood against she and her armies, he would die. If he went back to his sister to try and help her, he would die. She could not have his death on her conscience, and she couldn’t make him into a martyr, either. He had killed the Night King. He had done them all a service. Locked away was safer for everybody than dead.

He arrived to meet her in Robb’s office, and he faltered when he saw that it was only Daenerys who waited for him. Grey Worm had gone and requested his presence, and Grey Worm would stand guard just inside the door, but none of the Kingslayer’s friends would be present to soften this meeting. She saw the flicker of discomfort in his expression, and she felt glad; it was good, at least, that she wasn’t the only one unnerved.

She gestured without words to the uncomfortable wooden chair in front of the desk, and he approached slowly. He was a powerful man, even missing the hand at the end of his dominant arm, and he wore his tension openly in his muscles. He was afraid of her. She took comfort in that. He sat. He met her gaze, though she could see that his breathing was slightly strained. Heavy with the effort of keeping himself blank. She was suddenly even gladder that she had scheduled this conversation for when she knew that Brienne would be making the rounds with Sansa and Missandei, and would not be able to interrupt.

“Thank you for meeting me here,” she said, and Jaime nodded. He swallowed.

“Of course, your grace,” he said. She examined him carefully, and he allowed her to, sitting straight and prepared to answer anything she asked. She could not tell what was stronger within him: resignation or fear. He seemed removed, in an odd way she didn’t quite understand. Like only half of him was in this room with her. He didn’t seem like he was being purposely disrespectful, but she wasn’t sure what else it could be.

“I have several questions for you. I would imagine you aren’t surprised to hear that.”

“No. I don’t suppose I am.”

“You killed my father.”

“Yes. I did. Was that a question?”

“I have been told that you wouldn’t apologize for that.”

“I would not.”

“Even if it meant your life?” Daenerys asked. Jaime Lannister’s jaw clenched, but he shook his head.

“Even then,” he said.

“I was promised by Sansa Stark that you weren’t nearly as arrogant as I’d heard, but it appears she was mistaken.”

That earned her a small, distant smile.

“Sansa Stark is a clever girl. But she’s far too kind to her friends.”

“And is that what you are? Her friend?”

“I believe so. You’d have to ask her for her own assessment.”

“It matches yours,” Daenerys replied. “Which is why you survived as long as you have. Several of my advisors thought that it would be a better message to kill you.”

“ _Several_ of your advisors. I would wager your Hand was against it.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “He argued for keeping you alive, of course.” She watched the way affection crossed the Kingslayer’s face. She thought of brothers again, and how she had been cheated of a true one. “I wanted to kill you as well, though my reasons weren’t political ones. I spent my childhood terrified of you. Convinced that you would find us across the sea. Hunt us down. Kill us as you killed my father.”

“I wouldn’t have done that. You were children. I had no quarrel with you.”

“Not like you had with my father?”

“You were too young to burn Kings Landing,” Jaime said. “You were too young to stockpile wildfire and give the order to your pyromancers to set it off. I would stop you if you did it, just as I stopped him. But you were children. I would have protected you, if I could.” He was meeting her gaze, perhaps so that she wouldn’t accuse him of lying. So he didn’t know that Brienne had already spilled his secret. Daenerys smiled a little. She wouldn’t tell him. Let him think that the truth came from him.

“I’m glad to hear it,” she said. “That didn’t stop me from having a young girl’s fears of you.”

“I suppose it wouldn’t. And now?”

He looked at her with some humor in his gaze. A tired, exhausted kind of humor. Waiting for her opinion.

She took a few moments to examine him. She didn’t mind the look of him, even older and grayer than she had expected. She had heard tales of his beauty, even far across the sea. People talked about the Lannister twins as if they were golden and untouchable, but she saw a man halfway to broken now in front of her. He had lost a hand and had taken two injuries in battles that might have killed him. He wasn’t the man he had been, and he was certainly not the man she had feared. He was still handsome, and she imagined he would continue to be for many more years, as long as he survived the battle to come. She had seen the way that he trailed after Brienne of Tarth, always seeking to make her smile or laugh at him, his eyes lighting on her as if the plain, giant woman was the most beautiful woman in the world. She had seen the way that he walked with Sansa Stark on his arm, smiling gently down at her in a way that was father and brother and favorite uncle at once. Something soft and protective. No, Daenerys was not afraid of a man such as that. She supposed she could tell a lot about a man from watching the way he treated the women around him. Whatever he had been once, he was _this_ man now, and she did not fear him.

“You aren’t the man I used to imagine,” she finally said.

“He had two hands, probably.”

“He did. And a much crueler smile.”

“I had that, once.”

“You had the second hand, too.”

“Yes. If I were a better man, perhaps I would have lost the two together, but it took some time for the smile to fade. I followed my sister for far too long.”

“You did. And have you left her now?”

Jaime’s eyes flashed, then. Clearly, this was something about which he remained sensitive.

“Yes,” he said, firmly.

“Your brother wonders.”

“Everyone wonders. Except perhaps for Sansa, everyone I have spoken to has doubted that I am finished with her.”

“I expect your bother knows you better than anyone.”

“He thinks he does. I don’t blame him for being doubtful. But I mean to keep to my word this time.”

“I am sure he will be glad if you do,” Daenerys pointed out, and Jaime nodded, reluctant.

“I will not turn my back on the Starks and Brienne,” he said. “Or my brother. So I will not turn my back on you, your grace, if that’s what you were worried about. Or was it just that you wanted to see me up close to dispel your childish fears?”

“That was part of it. Though I wouldn’t describe fear as childish.”

“No. That wasn’t what I was saying. I still wake from nightmares of your father. And I have had more than a few where I find that you are the same.”

“I am not my father,” Daenerys said. Jaime quirked one eyebrow at her.

“Perhaps you don’t think you are, but it isn’t always simple to see from the inside. Few people want to be like their fathers. We can’t always help it.”

“Are you like your father, then?” Daenerys asked. She thought of Elia and her children. She thought of Tyrion’s expression when he talked about Tywin Lannister and all his cruelties.

“No,” Jaime said. “Fuck. I hope not.”

Daenerys could not help but smile at that.

“Good,” she said. “Hopefully we have that in common. And your sister?”

“What about my sister?”

“Is she anything like your father?”

Jaime hesitated, and he finally shrugged one shoulder.

“She likes to think she is,” he said, resigned. “I don’t know. I didn’t think so. But I was blind.”

“Tyrion doesn’t think that there’s any way to remove your sister without killing her. I wanted to get your opinion on it. I know the two of you were close. If you had been Targaryens…”

“Yes,” Jaime said dryly. “Believe me. The thought had crossed my mind once or twice. I offered, many times. For us to run away and find somewhere where we _could_ marry. Or perhaps where we could change our names, live as other people. She didn’t want to give up power then, not for me. She won’t want to give up power for _you_ , either.”

“I didn’t expect she would want to,” Daenerys said. “But _would_ she? If it was that or death…”

Jaime considered it. She could see that it caused him pain to think about it.

“I think she will endeavor to take out as many of us as she can,” he said. “I think she would rather die than give it up. If she’s going to be forced to relinquish the throne, if she thinks she’s going to be killed anyway, she will do anything to count it as a win, and for her that means destroying you along with her. She lost her children. She loved nothing so much as she loved them. And she has lost me, too. I don’t know if she’s realized that yet, but…I also don’t know if she would consider me something worth surviving for. She lost everything for power, and so she will cling to it as long as she can. But I would…if it’s possible. I would like the chance to talk to her. Maybe I can get through to her. I don’t know. I think I have to try.”

It would be easy to disbelieve Ser Jaime. He looked very sincere, but she knew that didn’t mean anything with men like him. Many men who had lied to her had also seemed sincere as they did it. Still. This was the sister that he had loved. Daenerys was in love now herself, and she knew what a powerful force it was. She knew, too, that Jaime loved Brienne and Tyrion and Sansa. That was a lot of love. That was a lot of motivation to stand against Cersei. It was easier to trust him when she remembered that.

“All right,” she said. “If there is a chance, you will be allowed to try.”

Jaime nodded, and he thanked her politely, and the last of her fear was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Gabriel by Bear's Den


	75. Arya VII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya shows off some of her skills to the others.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just the one chapter for today! Hopefully you all are enjoying! We're so close to the end I can almost taste it!

Jon gritted his teeth and refused to fully look at her, but Robb wasn’t the same. He’d joked about it, a bit, when he first came back from Dragonstone. Sansa’s letters were probably accurate, because Sansa always wrote as prettily as she did everything else, but Arya understood that this was the kind of thing that a person needed to see before they could fully comprehend it. Now, Robb’s brow was furrowed as he peered at her. He tilted his head first one way, then the other, moving closer, trying to figure out where the mask began. It was when he tried to reach out and touch it that she jerked away from him, sighing.

“You’re taller,” he pointed out in an affronted tone of voice. “How do you _do_ that?”

“You want to find out so bad, _you_ go learn how to do it,” Arya responded. It came out in Littlefinger’s voice, but in a petulant tone that must have been all _her_ , because Robb laughed, delighted. Sansa rolled her eyes, but she was smiling a bit, too. Jon mostly just looked sick.

Nobody hated the whole face thing more than Jon. Arya was sorry for him, in a way. She understood why he was so scared. It wasn’t _her_ that scared him, though that was what she’d thought at first. She’d been hurt by it. Not that she would ever tell him that, but she was. She was his little sister still, even though she’d learned a few things since she saw him last. He wasn’t all perfect, either. He wanted to marry their _sister_.

But Jon just loved her a lot, and he didn’t want her to change. With Robb, it was different. She and Robb had gotten along fine, but they didn’t have anywhere near the same bond as she’d had with Jon. Arya had the Stark look more than the Tully. Arya was the one who never treated Jon like he was a bastard, never reminded him that he was only their half-brother. Arya was _his_ , just as he was hers, and it was just _different_. He wanted to keep her safe, and keeping her safe meant keeping her the same. It was stupid, but she understood it. She wanted to keep him safe, too. She just knew that keeping someone safe didn’t mean keeping them the same as they always were. They were _all_ different now.

Admittedly, _can change faces_ was a bit _more_ different than things like Sansa’s cold politeness and Robb’s measured caution. Bran’s Bran shit probably had her beat, but only by a bit. She could understand why it upset Jon so much. She felt sorry for it. Didn’t mean it wasn’t also _annoying._

Daenerys had probably seen a lot of weird stuff across the sea. Arya’d only been to _Braavos_ , and that was filled with enough odd things for a whole lifetime. So it was no surprise that Daenerys hardly even blinked. She looked more fascinated than Robb, and she walked around Arya in a circle to see if there were any tricks she could understand. There weren’t, but it didn’t seem to bother her the way it clearly bothered Robb. She stood in front of Arya at the end. Her eyebrows were doing that thing her eyebrows always seemed to do, where they got all scrunched in on themselves while she thought. It wasn’t like Arya was planning on stealing _her_ face anytime soon, but it was the kind of thing that she couldn’t help but notice now. The little gestures that made a person.

“This could be useful,” Daenerys said. She looked at Tyrion, who was gaping openly. He closed his mouth with a snapping sound and took a few steps closer, though no closer than that.

“I’d say so,” he said. “Did you actually _kill_ him?”

“No, he’s wandering around somewhere without a face,” Arya deadpanned. Tyrion frowned into his goblet. Varys, who had been making a face like he’d accidentally drank spoiled milk, made the face even harder. Jaime winced. His arms were folded across his chest and he was looking at her the way that everyone always looked at maps on the war table. Like it was a skill they could use if they could find out the right way to use it. She didn’t mind that, though the wincing was a bit much. He paced, rubbing absently at the blue covering he was wearing on his missing hand. This unthinking gesture that reminded Arya of the way Sansa tapped her finger against her arm when she was distracted and trying to puzzle something out.

Little bits of people. Collected and memorized. Just in case. Maybe Jon was right to be so worried. Sometimes Arya was worried, too.

Jaime stopped pacing at last, and he ran his hand through his hair.

“I don’t know if Cersei would _trust_ Littlefinger,” he said. “But she wouldn’t just execute him at first sight.”

“First sight’s all I need,” Arya said. Jaime frowned deeper, and Brienne closed her eyes and shook her head like Arya had said something wrong, even though Cersei’s execution was what they were all here to _talk_ about. “It doesn’t have to be Littlefinger. I can be a serving girl. A guard. A goldcloak.”

Jaime had gone still and pale, and Brienne was watching him warily. Daenerys was, too. And Sansa. _Gods_ , did they really not get it? He’d be _upset_ when his sister was dead, but he knew what they had to do, and he wasn’t going to try to stop them. There was no reason to look so concerned. _Let the man be unhappy without immediately thinking him about to turn traitor,_ she thought. A defensive impulse that was irritating to experience. The problem with observing and understanding people was that sometimes you understood people you’d rather not get. Jaime Lannister was like that. He looked at Arya with a grim expression, and she understood perfectly, even though she hardly knew him at all. He was thinking that a quick death from _her_ would be better than one from dragonfire or some kind of humiliating execution after the war. Not an easy trade to make, but he _understood_ it.

When she was a girl, maybe Arya would’ve wanted to drag out Cersei’s death. Make it painful. But she wasn’t a girl anymore. She just wanted Cersei dead. And it wasn’t even all about what she _wanted_ this time, anyway. It was about what would help all of them. Westeros needed Cersei to be off the throne, and Arya could do it. She didn’t mind making it fast if it would make Jaime feel better. He’d saved her life a few times during the fighting, and he’d saved all of them by killing the Night King when no one else could. If a quick death was what he wanted…well, he’d earned that for Cersei, as far as Arya was concerned. And besides. She’d seen enough suffering. Even if it was Cersei, she didn’t think she’d like to be the cause of more.

Daenerys shifted uncomfortably and turned back to Arya, taking her eyes away from Jaime’s.

“Even without taking Cersei into account…this skill would help us get into the city,” she said slowly. “Especially if we’re going to try and evacuate.”

“Yes,” Jaime said.

“I’ve told you, _no,_ ” Tyrion sighed. “It’s too much, and it’s not worth the risk it poses to our advantage. Taking the city as quickly as possible is the _only_ way. The keep may well have wildfire set as a trap, but the rest of the city will be clear. Wasting time and resources on trying to evacuate smallfolk will only alert Cersei sooner. There’s no chance she had enough wildfire after what we did at the Blackwater. I increased our stores and then I _used_ our stores. Whatever she had left, she used to explode the sept.”

“She didn’t,” Jaime insisted. “She still had it, and she had people working on making more. Qyburn controls the city now, and he does whatever she asks of him. He’s cleverer than he seems. You never saw how she was getting.”

“Paranoid, mad,” Tyrion said dismissively. “Yes, you’ve said.”

“She would do _anything_ to keep hold of her power,” Jaime fired back. He was growing irritated, and Arya could tell that he wasn’t lying. Whether he was right or not was more difficult to say. Arya didn’t remember much about the queen, but she remembered how angry Cersei seemed. All the time. No matter what she was doing or who she was talking to, the queen had always been angry. Angry in a way that Arya almost understood, even as a little girl, because _she_ was often angry even when things didn’t have an easy cause. Just…angry at everything. Angry at being told what to do. Angry at being left alone. Angry when people wanted to spend time with her and angry when they excluded her. The world seemed to be exactly counter to everything she wanted. Cersei’s hatred had been bitterer than Arya’s own, though. It had been stronger and more lethal. It wasn’t hard to imagine her trying to kill everyone if she thought that Daenerys was going to take her crown. She would be so angry that Daenerys would even try.

“Yes, I agree, but she doesn’t have the capability!” Tyrion continued to insist. “The wildfire…”

“She named Qyburn as her Hand. He brought the Mountain back to life. I wasn’t allowed in on most of her discussions with him, but I heard _enough._ Wildfire was always part of the plan.”

“Now _you’re_ the one who sounds paranoid. If you truly thought she was planning something, you would have intervened. You would have asked her, at least. I know it’s easy to look back on it now and assume the worst, but if you really thought she was a threat...”

Jaime laughed harshly, bitterly.

“Tyrion,” he said, almost pitying. “I didn’t ask. I didn’t try to intervene. Maybe I would have, if it had gone any farther than talk. I like to think so. But I…I wanted nothing to do with it. I looked the other way. I didn’t…I wasn’t…myself. I had given up on stopping her. On helping her, too. But now…Tyrion, she’s had moons on her own to plan for the end. What do you think she’s been doing? She’s been _preparing_! If you attack her with those dragons, those dragons are going to raze the city.”

“Jaime, she isn’t _nearly_ that competent,” Tyrion argued. And, well. That was a solid point. It was easy to imagine Cersei _wanting_ to blow up everyone with wildfire, but _could_ she? Cersei had never struck Arya as being very good at anything.

But then again: underestimating people was usually a stupid idea. Loads of people had underestimated Arya in her life, just because she was small and a girl. Arya never liked to make the same kinds of mistakes that people made about her. Bad enough to make them at all, but to be a hypocrite about it would make it embarrassing.

“She’s competent enough to think of using wildfire,” Jaime reminded Tyrion sourly.

“No, _I_ was competent enough to think of using wildfire. She just followed my lead and is probably calling the idea her own, because that’s what she does!”

“So send me in,” Arya said. She had her arms folded across her chest. “I can go in, stab her. Easy. I can even wear her face so that her people don’t panic. Give up the city easily without any need for dragons at all.”

Jaime didn’t like that one; he paled significantly, but he didn’t say anything to argue. Arya felt sorry for him. She imagined it wasn’t easy, choosing to go against the sister you used to love so much when you knew stuff like this was going to happen. She knew he was on their side. She knew he was going to help them. He’d made that choice, and he wasn’t going to unmake it. He could flash around his sarcastic smiles and make his shitty, defensive quips all he wanted. Arya knew. He cared about what happened to everyone, and he knew that his sister didn’t. That didn’t mean he was ever going to be okay talking about Arya cutting off Cersei’s face and pretending to _be_ her. Arya wouldn’t like it if someone threatened to do the same to _her_ siblings, even if her siblings went all evil. And Jaime loved Cersei differently, too. It was a lot for one man to handle.

It wasn’t only Jaime, though. Sansa was shaking her head. Her lips were pressed together, and she was breathing hard through her nose in the way she did when she felt sick or scared or maybe both.

“There has to be another way,” she said. “I don’t want you wearing her face.”

Arya sighed. She nodded. She forgot, sometimes, that Sansa wasn’t as hard as she pretended to be. She was good at seeming strong in the same kind of way that Arya had gotten strong. Like this outer shell that protected her from everything. Arya could see past it when she really tried, but sometimes she didn’t _think_ to try. Sansa _was_ strong. Stronger and smarter than she used to be, just like Arya, but there were some things that hadn’t completely changed. She still turned away from things that Arya didn’t flinch from. And people like Littlefinger and Cersei…they had a power over Sansa that they never had over Arya. Littlefinger’s face was just a face. Just a man. An odious, annoying, gross man, but _just a man_. Arya didn’t _like_ pretending to be him, but it wasn’t like pretending to be him would turn her into him. And wearing Cersei’s face wouldn’t make her Cersei. But Sansa…Sansa was more afraid of becoming either of the two of them than Arya was. Of course it would mean something different to her.

“I’ll be all right,” she said gently. “She won’t be any harder to kill than anyone else, and it’ll _help._ The queen is on my list. She’s been on my list since the start. And Gregor is on Sandor’s list.”

Sandor, at the back of the room, nodded. Sansa looked briefly in his direction. She was shaking her head.

“It’s madness,” she said. “You can’t go against her. She’ll…”

“I can,” Arya said. “I can kill her.” She looked at Jaime again. He didn’t argue, but his arms seemed like they were crossed tighter over his chest, and he was watching her. Brienne was watching him. “I will kill her. She’s mine to kill.”

“Killing,” Daenerys pointed out. “Shouldn’t be our first object. I don’t want to take the throne by force unless I have to. I want to be merciful. For the sake of my Hand, and for the sake of Ser Jaime, and for the sake of all the people who remember my father’s rule.” She and Jaime exchanged a glance, and she gave him a small smile before turning back to Arya. “We will give Cersei a chance to surrender. We will speak with her. We will offer her life in exchange for the throne. If she doesn’t take it, _then_ we’ll talk about sending you in.”

Sandor grumbled and left the meeting. Jaime stared a hole in the floor. Tyrion drank.

Arya nodded. She didn’t wait to be dismissed. She didn’t want to be wearing Littlefinger’s face anymore.

* * *

It wasn’t like she _wanted_ to kill anyone. It wasn’t about want. She found her way up through one of the passages that Bran showed her when they were young. It was automatic to be so quiet now that she was back to being herself. It took a bit more effort when she was wearing someone else.

Daenerys had looked at her with mild concern. Sansa had been _Sansa_. Jon’s teeth could be heard grinding together all the way in King’s Landing, probably. Arya sometimes wished she was the sort of person who could just sit down and explain things to her family, but that wasn’t her. And how _would_ she explain it? How would she explain all the terrible things that happened and how they had changed her into the person she was now? How would she ever explain her list?

She’d explained it to Sansa, in a way. But glossed over, made pretty with smiles and laughs and some rolling of her eyes. That was how she handled things now that made her uncomfortable to talk about. Maybe that was how she’d always done it. But now it felt more like a defense than before. Her list was a defense too. Held close, repeated at night. Killing the Freys had done away with some of its urgency. And seeing Robb again. And being home. She didn’t need the list like she used to need it, back when the list was all she had to keep her going.

Arya understood why Jon hated the idea of her crossing Cersei off her list. She understood why Robb hesitated to react. She did. She could see it from the outside and she could see why they would be worried about their little sister gone so sharp and hating, and she didn’t know how she was supposed to explain it to them. But she could understand it and also think it was stupid at the same time.

She crept up through the passages. Tyrion was talking to Bran in the library, taking notes. Varys was talking quietly in another room with a serving girl who used to work for Littlefinger. Daenerys and Robb were still in the war room with Jon and Sansa and Jaime. They’d added Davos and both Greyjoy siblings. Arya liked Yara a lot, and not just because their names were so close; Yara knew a lot of good jokes, and she reminded Arya of some of the nicer ladies she’d met in Braavos. They were full of that same swagger. And Theon. Well. Arya had liked Theon once, but now she tried to avoid him. Everyone was different after everything they’d been through, and Robb had forgiven Theon for doing what he did, but Arya hadn’t. She couldn’t totally hate him because of Sansa, so she just kept herself from seeing him at all, as much as she could. 

Brienne was standing guard outside, which meant she was talking to Grey Worm and Missandei, making awkward conversation about their plans for after the war. Arya listened for a bit before she climbed back around to the war room. She remembered when her father used it as a kind of reading room. It was always dusty, because he only ever used the one chair and a stack of books he’d sit and read for some peace. Bran and Arya used to crouch in the dark behind the wall and giggle, and he would pretend not to hear them, and he would pretend to be surprised when they knocked on the inside of the wall and acted like they were Winterfell’s ghosts.

Now, Robb and Daenerys were talking about the ways into and out of Kings Landing. Davos was pointing out some stuff on a map and—oh. Gendry was there, too, in the back. Davos pulled him forward, and Gendry went reluctantly, looking awkward in a room full of people staring at him. Arya wished she wasn’t in this stupid passage so she could make fun of him and make him feel better. But maybe he wouldn’t like that. She didn’t know. He could be strange about being friendly in front of everyone else, and she always felt guilty when she upset him. He could be a twit about the _milady_ stuff, but she didn’t want him to feel bad. He’d fought bravely during the battle, and before that he’d spent days in the forge. All those pretty dragonglass swords and arrowheads and daggers. It was all because of him. The least she could do was avoid embarrassing him.

He mumbled when he talked, and he didn’t look at anyone but Davos, but he _did_ point out all the spots he knew of where people could slip through the tunnels under the city. Davos was pointing out his own locations, and Robb and Daenerys were watching, expressions grim but thoughtful. Jon was pacing, and he kept looking back at Sansa, who was talking to Jaime.

Jaime was sitting down near the back of the room, and Sansa sat close beside him. Arya crept around near them, so she could hear their conversation.

“I know,” Sansa said. Jaime snorted.

“Of course you don’t.”

“Jaime…”

“Whatever the technical similarities, _he_ is a good man. Would you truly say the same about my sister?”

“I wasn’t speaking of Jon. I was speaking of Joffrey.”

Jaime scoffed at that.

“Joffrey,” he said. “You were a child. You didn’t know any better.”

“And how old were _you_ when you realized that you loved Cersei?” Sansa pointed out. Jaime nodded in acknowledgement, though it was surprised and a little wary.

“Young,” he said. “But you realized…”

“I realized your son was a monster when he removed my father’s head. And when he took me up to the battlements and made me stand and look at where he’d had it shoved on a spike. My father and my septa both, and he wanted me to see. He wanted me to cry. That’s when I knew for sure.”

“Well. Cersei never got quite that far,” Jaime admitted, leaning back in his chair with a sigh. Sansa touched his hand.

“No,” she said. “But you know now. I know it’s not going to be easy. But Arya…”

“I know,” Jaime murmured. “She’ll give Cersei a cleaner death than Daenerys would.”

“She doesn’t want to hurt anyone,” Sansa said. Arya was startled into complete stillness, listening, her eyes wide. “I know how she seems sometimes, but that’s just…that’s bluster. That’s not Arya. Arya is…she wants to help. Us, her family. Everyone. She’s not going to do it to cause Cersei any pain. She’s going to do it because Cersei cannot remain in power, and Arya’s ability gives her the skills to remove her easier than any of us.”

Jaime was nodding, and continuing, and Sansa answered, but Arya wasn’t listening. She was away, in the walls, smiling. Sansa’s words, Sansa’s _faith_ , making her feel warm all over. She passed by the library again on her way out, and she saw Bran looking straight at her, and Bran was smiling too. Just a bit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Luke’s Tree by Paddy Mulcahy


	76. Robb XI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The armies march south towards Kings Landing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alright lads, it's gonna be this chapter and another chapter today, and three tomorrow!

The morning they left Winterfell, Robb argued with Arya and Sansa, and so all three of them set off for Riverrun in foul moods.

It was his fault entirely, which he well knew even as he was digging himself deeper. He just couldn’t seem to help himself from speaking and ruining all the peace they’d cultivated in the past few weeks as they healed and moved forward from the battle against the dead. It wasn’t that he meant to make them angry, but sometimes he _forgot_. He forgot about how things had changed since they first left Winterfell. It was tempting to remember his sisters as they had been and to tease them as if they were still the same. Sometimes they could be so _themselves_. Arya was stronger and faster and she was one of the best fighters he had ever seen, but she still had the same childish giggle and the same untamed, chaotic energy, and he saw so clearly the little girl she used to be. Even when Jaime Lannister had the gall to point out that she was _flirting_ with that Gendry lad, Robb couldn’t see her as any older than ten years old.

And he fucking _hated_ the thing with the faces.

He knew that Jon hated it too. Jon was more demonstrative about hating it. He grew moody and withdrawn and refused to talk to any of them about it. Robb had already been avoiding serious talks with Jon because _serious talks_ meant _talking about the Sansa thing_ , but Jon made it easy with the way he was constantly disappearing so he didn’t have to reckon with the faces. So maybe Robb could be forgiven for thinking that _his_ hatred of Arya’s skills was somehow more rational than Jon’s. But then he and Arya had argued, and then it turned out that it wasn’t. 

It was just…his little sister. His _little sister_ , and he was supposed to be all right with her killing people and swapping their faces using some magic he didn’t understand? And he was supposed to be all right with using her as an _assassin_? Sending her in against Cersei Lannister, who was guarded by an undead shade of the Mountain?

It had bothered him even more because Sansa seemed completely all right with it. She’d argued against sending Arya in against Cersei, but when it came to the faces, she was _unshakable_. She and Arya had become some kind of ironclad, unstoppable force. One testy word against one would be sharply rebuked by the other, and Robb and Jon—along with everyone else in their inner circle—had quickly learned that the Stark sisters would almost always back each other now.

It wasn’t that Robb was _jealous_ of that. But he _did_ make the mistake of mentioning that it was a new development, and that the reason Sansa was so fine with Arya using the faces to kill people was that she’d never cared about Arya when they were young.

It had been the wrong thing to say. It had so _obviously_ been the wrong thing to say. He had apologized for it immediately, but Sansa had been angry, and Arya had been even angrier. Hours later, Jaime still chuckled every time he made eye contact with Robb, because of course the bastard had been there to witness the whole thing. Jon had been there too, but Jon had merely grimaced apologetically in his direction and then had gone off in search of whichever of the girls he could track down first.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Robb had said pathetically to Brienne, who had smiled at him indulgently.

“Yes you did,” she said.

* * *

It made for a supremely awkward start for the ride south. It was hard enough to leave Winterfell behind again, knowing that he likely would not be coming back for a long time. Hard enough to mount his horse and leave his childhood home behind. Riding off to another war. Married, now, and so much more certain of a victory than he had been last time. Still, it was difficult to do, and it was made harder still, knowing that his sisters were angry with him.

Daenerys laughed at him when he told her the story the first night they stopped to sleep.

“You know I’m not the person to ask,” she said. “I never had any sisters.”

She was lying beneath their furs, naked and sated and soft. Daenerys was beautiful in any light, but there was something about the way she looked in candlelight that he liked in particular. The way it brought out a flush in her face, and the way it made her smiles warmer. His fingertips trailed down her arm, and she watched him with a smile.

“I’ll have to apologize to them, and they’re terrifying,” he said finally. It made Daenerys laugh, and her laugh made him smile, as ever. She shook her head at him.

“You’re hopeless,” she said. She lay back against the pillow to think about it. “Just…tell them _why_. Don’t just apologize. Explain. They’ll understand.”

“I can’t even explain it to _you_.”

“I didn’t tell you to _over_ explain it,” Daenerys said with a roll of her eyes. “I don’t think you should tell them flowery tales. Just tell them that you’re going to miss them. Just tell them that your time together is running short, and that you wanted to preserve them as your little sisters for as long as you can.”

“How did _you_ know that?”

Daenerys smiled at Robb’s incredulity, and she leaned forward to press a kiss against his lips.

“Because I know _you_ ,” she replied.

* * *

And she was right, wasn’t she? That was exactly what it was. It had been stupid of him to ignore it for this long. The war in the north was done, and he had married a woman who would be queen of Westeros.

He would live in the Red Keep. He would live in Kings Landing. Sansa and Jon would hold Winterfell—he had already determined that much—and Arya. Well. Who knew with Arya?

_When was the last time mother saw Edmure before the war?_ Robb tried to remember. _Will I have to call my banners every time I want to see Sansa_?

It was the way of things. Robb remembered their mother explaining it to he and Sansa _years_ ago, when they were still practically babes. Sansa would move away and marry some fancy lord, or perhaps a prince, and Robb would stay. It had shaken Robb then, and it was shaking Robb now. How had he let himself forget? Returning to Winterfell had seemed like a permanent choice at the time, but it wasn’t. Reuniting with Sansa and Jon and settling in to his childhood home. But he wasn’t a child any longer, and he had made his choices. Good ones, he thought. Ones he didn’t regret. But they were choices that would take him further from childhood than ever.

Winterfell would never be his home again. There was no going back from here.

* * *

His mood blackened the further they rode. Things moved slowly with the caravan of wounded and the fighters who were still exhausted after weeks of healing. Robb was not impatient to be at war again, but there was little else to do but _think_ when the pace was so terrible, and he wanted to avoid that. Sansa spent most of her time with her sworn swords and Jon and Arya. Sandor Clegane orbited around Robb’s sisters like a restless dog, and Missandei and Grey Worm had forged some friendships among them, too. Brienne and Grey Worm sparred often, and Robb would watch them jealously, and he would think about how Brienne would likely go back north with Jon and Sansa, too, when it was done.

He thought of his mother often. She’d told him a few times, in light tones that spoke of acceptance, about how she felt when she left her home to marry Eddard Stark. Moving north and leaving behind everything she had ever known. It must have been difficult for her. She never complained to Robb. She never told him _how_ she did it. How she endured it. Robb wished suddenly that she _had_. He wished that he had understood better.

“It isn’t that I regret anything that’s happened,” he told Daenerys firmly after the third day, when his thoughts were more organized. “I don’t want you to think that. I love you. I’m glad I wed you.”

“But…” Daenerys prompted with a smile.

“But I’m going to miss them,” Robb said, and Daenerys nodded, as if she had known that was what he was going to say.

* * *

He found Arya first. She was picking on Gendry as he rifled through a bunch of assorted armor that had been taken from the dead. He and the other blacksmiths had brought it all in massive carts and were fixing what they could on the road so that there would be enough for anyone who joined them at Riverrun and from the companies that would be arriving from The Vale and Dorne. Arya’s tone was light and teasing, and thanks to Jaime Lannister Robb couldn’t see it as anything but flirting. If they were younger, Robb probably would have teased her about it. He could imagine the way she’d scowl at him and maybe kick his shin in retribution. But they weren’t those children anymore, and he had no idea how to tease her the way he used to.

Arya kicked at the dirt as they spoke, as if he was scolding her. She scowled at the ground. She spun her little dagger around between her fingers as if she meant to stab him with it if he said something wrong. Robb had never been very good at this, at talking seriously, and with Arya it was especially difficult. They had this in common, this love of mischief and japing. This same embarrassment of being entirely earnest, especially with each other.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and Arya scoffed at him. “I mean it.”

“Course you’re sorry, but you still said it. Sansa’s different, you know.”

“I’m not just sorry about what I said about Sansa. I’m sorry about how I’ve been about your skills. You helped us a great deal with Littlefinger, and I have no doubt that you’ll help us more when we get to Kings Landing.” Arya was looking at him suspiciously when he finished, and he almost _did_ laugh, then. “I’m being sincere.”

“I know. It’s weird. _You’re_ not getting all spooky like Bran, are you?”

“No. I’m just trying to be grown up.”

“Well, stop. You and Sansa. Both of you are so _serious_ all the time. And _Jon_ , gods.”

“I won’t be coming back to Winterfell after the war, Arya,” Robb said, and now she glared at him.

“Well neither will I, probably,” she said, defiant. “There’s loads of places I’d like to see.”

“I’ll have to stay in Kings Landing,” Robb continued, and Arya sighed.

“You’ll be the _king_ ,” she said. “Of course you’ll have to stay there.”

“I’m trying to explain.”

“Explain _what_?”

“Why I acted like such an ass the other day.”

“You’ve always been an ass,” Arya fired back, but he could see that there was a hesitant interest behind her expression, so he forged onward.

“We aren’t children anymore,” he said. “And we won’t be again. When I got back to Winterfell, the last thing I ever wanted was to leave it again. Me and Jon and Sansa would sit around at night, drinking wine and talking, and I would think…it would feel like forever. But it wasn’t. It can’t be. That isn’t how it works.”

“Why _not_?” Arya asked, and there was a whining edge to her voice that she tried to hide. It punched Robb straight in the gut.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I have responsibilities now, and I have to see to them. And I’m going to miss all of you. That’s why I’ve been…difficult about it. I just wanted you to be my little sister again. It was selfish. I was acting like an idiot.”

Arya’s chin quivered. Her jaw clenched. She kicked at the dirt again.

“I wasn’t even that mad anyway,” she said, and she grumbled when he hugged her, but she hugged him desperately in return.

* * *

Sansa was easier. She was warier to start with, but she was much quicker to understand. When Robb said the same thing he’d told Arya about wishing he could stay with them, she smiled sadly.

“We can write letters,” she said. “And with things safer once again, maybe we could all travel more. Make an effort to visit. I know it won’t be easy. But we won’t be like mother and Edmure. I won’t let us.”

There was a determined set to her shoulders that made Robb smile helplessly, and then they were hugging again. Still so close in height to each other. Still as much alike as they were different. He remembered a thousand moments from when they were young and she was the baby sister he would have done anything for. They weren’t children anymore, but they would always be those children all the same. She was still Sansa, and he knew she would keep her word.

* * *

The second week of riding was much more settled than the first. Robb and his siblings were all determined to make the best of their remaining time together. They rode together, talked for hours, laughed as much as they could. Robb heard more of Arya’s stories, and he and Jon and Arya all laughed at Sansa’s gasps and disbelieving laughter at the things that Arya had seen in Braavos. He sparred with Brienne and Jaime, and he rode with Daenerys and Tyrion, and he got to know Gendry and, to his annoyance, found that he enjoyed the way Gendry could tease Arya just as badly as she teased him.

Bran and Varys rode together in a cart with Gilly and Sam, who were excited to get to Riverrun and see little Sam again. Robb looked in on them often to find them all talking. Gilly was asking Bran all sorts of questions, and Bran answered her without the annoyance he sometimes showed when Arya talked to him. He’d seemed more present since the Night King was defeated. He still wasn’t the little brother Robb remembered, and Robb had finally begun to accept that perhaps that little brother wouldn’t be coming back, but Bran was still there sometimes, somewhere, even if it was deep inside him. And it was good to see him talking to others. Making them laugh. It gave Robb hope.

Often as they rode, Daenerys would get quiet and thoughtful. She would watch her remaining dragons as they flew ahead. There had been times since the battle that she had been more muted, and Robb wondered sometimes—deeply within, in a way that shamed him when the moment passed—if she grieved more for the loss of her dragon or her knight. Her quiet moments weren’t anything like the deep depression that had come over Robb after the wedding, but they had the same feeling to them, and it made Robb feel many things, but mostly it made him feel sad for his wife. Afraid, perhaps, too. He remembered her anger and her desperation the night the battle ended, when she stood over the map and asked him to talk her down from burning Kings Landing. He had understood when he married her that he was marrying the quest as much as he was marrying the woman. He had fallen in love with a woman who wanted to be queen. Who thought it her destiny. Who was willing to take the crown at any cost. Most of the time, he trusted her fully to make the right decisions, but he understood too well what grief could do to a person.

All he could do was ride with her. Smile at her. Kiss her and remind her that there was so much left around them that was good. He saw her smiles when Sansa presented her with a new cloak. He saw her laughter when Arya and Ghost were wrestling in the melting snow as they made their way further south. He watched her contemplative expression as she spoke to Bran, and her giggles with Missandei as they watched Brienne and Grey Worm spar, and her soft smiles when she spied on Brienne and Jaime at their campfire, with Brienne blushing fiercely at something sweet Jaime was saying to her. Daenerys was surrounded by people who loved her, and she had come to love them in turn. She had the support that Robb hadn’t been given, and hadn’t cared to find. Most days, Robb was confident. He believed that she would be all right.

He had never wanted to be king. He _still_ didn’t want to be king, and Daenerys seemed to grow more wary at the thought of queendom every day. She looked tired and constantly worried by the idea, and every time they had spoken of it since the battle, it had seemed more like an item on a checklist of things she had to do rather than the passion she once had felt. He couldn’t blame her. It was an exhausting prospect, being in charge of Westeros. The north was difficult enough. But what was the alternative? Leave Cersei Lannister on the throne?

Daenerys would be a good queen. He was sure of that, at least. She would be a good queen, and he would be the best king he knew how to be. His doubts would have to wait for a time when he could afford to have them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Spinning on Blue by Bien


	77. Sansa XIV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The armies stop at Riverrun for a time.

When she rode through the gates of Riverrun for the first time, Sansa felt closer to her mother than she ever had.

Catelyn told her stories about Riverrun when Sansa was a child. Stories about warm green wood and the sounds of rushing water and lovely little glens filled with flowers that Catelyn would braid into Lysa’s hair. Sansa used to beg to visit, desperate to see the place where her mother grew up, a place so much prettier than Winterfell, but there hadn’t been the time before they were going to Kings Landing, and Kings Landing was so much grander than Riverrun, anyway.

Entering Riverrun, after so long without her mother, it made her feel _so much._

Everything about the air and the sound of the river and the acres of green all brought Catelyn’s kindness and softness and strength back to Sansa’s memory. Uncle Edmure was waiting for the party from Winterfell as they rode up, and Sansa could see her mother in him, too. Catelyn Tully was everywhere.

Edmure welcomed Sansa with a friendliness that was unexpected, and he quickly launched into an explanation of Riverrun’s supplies and shortages. Sansa appreciated it, though it amused her to know that her reputation had become that of someone so focused on the minutiae of ruling. She wondered if Catelyn would have ever believed it of her, and it made her smile.

For the first time, she was sure that her mother would have been proud of her. 

Robb and Sansa were led first into Edmure’s solar. Daenerys was greeting those of her people who had been quartered in and around Riverrun during the war against the dead. Their voices as they cheered for their queen could be heard through the window, and Robb smiled out at the balcony more than once during Edmure’s summarized account of what had happened since Robb had last passed through. Olenna Tyrell had apparently been holding court, terrorizing the household and Edmure’s wife, but helping to keep everyone’s spirits up with her wit and her lack of adherence to the conventions of propriety.

At the mention of Roslin Tully, Sansa could see Robb go tense, his eyes dragging back from the window to look at Edmure, whose expression had gone white when he realized what he had said. Sansa reached out and tucked her arm through her brother’s, hoping to lend him strength, or stand with him in some way.

_I should have just married her_ , he’d said, more than once, those first weeks when he was back in Winterfell. _She seemed a nice enough girl. Pretty. Quiet. I wonder how much she knew. She must have known it all. She didn’t look very happy. She should have said something. Told anyone. We would have helped her._

Sansa had made some comment about how Roslin may have just been disappointed to be marrying the older uncle and not the young king, but she knew well enough that Roslin may have known what her father had planned. Sansa had a sympathy towards her. Her own father had been kind, but Sansa had lived in fear under the rule of fathers like Tywin Lannister and Roose Bolton, and she could only imagine what it would have been like to grow up as Walder Frey’s daughter. To stand there and marry Edmure, knowing full well that her father was about to betray the alliance and slaughter everyone from her husband’s family. What had it been like for her? To carry Edmure’s child and to wonder if there was anything she could have done to prevent it?

“I hope your wife is well,” was all Robb said, and Edmure nodded, swallowing a too-loud gulp of relief that nearly made Sansa laugh aloud.

“She is. She’s very well.” A small, wincing smile, and he hurried to say, “she was relieved to hear that her father had been killed.”

Sansa did not find that particularly difficult to believe.

“She can thank Arya for that,” she said. Edmure’s eyes went to her, wide. Sansa smiled. “Arya was the one who killed them.”

Edmure stammered and nodded and said nothing for a while, obviously dying to ask how Arya did it all herself. He didn’t, though; just launched back into what was obviously a prepared speech. Sansa squeezed Robb’s arm before moving to look at the different maps and papers that Edmure had spread out for them.

The Riverlands had seen no further attempted actions from the Lannister forces. Edmure had sent out scouting parties every few days, and Olenna had her own contacts with her people remaining at Highgarden and Dragonstone. As they had all predicted, Cersei seemed content to hide behind the walls of her castle and wait for Daenerys to come to _her_. Edmure was pleased as if he had driven her off himself, and Sansa allowed him his enthusiasm with a small roll of her eyes over to Robb, who grinned knowingly back at her.

Riverrun’s stores were holding up well, though war had done more damage in the Riverlands than anywhere else. It was the new alliances that were making up the difference. Greyjoy supply lines were essential, as were Dorne trading alliances, and Edmure was about as enthusiastic about glass gardens as Sansa was, so there was already some new growth to speak of. Edmure spoke at length about several ideas for improvement, including offering incentives to farmers to go out and work the land again after having been cloistered away in Riverrun for so long. The fighters from the battle against the dead who were still perhaps too wounded to fight against Cersei’s armies but who would recover soon could be offered payment to provide security for the smallfolk as they reclaimed their homes and villages and the places they’d had to leave behind during the War of the Five Kings. After a while, even Robb warmed up to the ideas Edmure was presenting, and it truly felt like the worst of everything might be over. That wasn’t a comfortable thought to Sansa, who had grown used to always expecting worst things to come.

She wouldn’t let her guard down just yet. But still. It was strange to feel that there was any kind of hope that things might actually be… _all right._

Daenerys was taken with Riverun, too. She liked the trees and the waters around it, and she liked the way it felt to stand up at the balcony at the highest point of the castle and look out.

“You can see so much from up here,” she said, leaning her elbows on it, staring out, her clear eyes bright and beautiful. “Imagine living here as a girl. How wonderful it must have been.”

Sansa imagined it often. Her mother, running from room to room with Aunt Lysa and Uncle Edmure. Causing trouble as Sansa and her own siblings used to when they were young. Catelyn always said that she had been a _little lady_ just like Sansa, and Sansa had believed her, but Uncle Edmure delighted during their short visit in telling Sansa all about the mischief he remembered his oldest sister encouraging.

It was a pleasant enough interlude, even if it wouldn’t last very long. Sansa argued again with Robb about whether or not she would stay behind when the armies marched on, and again she won the battle; she wanted to be in Kings Landing when Cersei fell. She didn’t need to _see_ it. She didn’t need to watch Cersei suffer. She just needed to _know_. She would stay outside the walls with the bulk of the army, and with people like Missandei and Varys, who would not be marching in. Daenerys thought it was a good plan, too, because she knew how Sansa and Missandei had bolstered the morale of the wounded when they were trapped within Winterfell. Robb found himself outvoted by his sister and his wife, and he had sulked about it but had not tried to argue again.

* * *

Sansa dismissed Brienne early on one of their final nights in Riverrun, and she hoped that Brienne would find some moments alone with Jaime, who had been insufferable as they rode south, trying to engage Sansa’s taciturn guardian. Brienne had blushed and stammered and refused to respond to his taunts, and if he did any more longing over the top of Sansa’s head, she was going to scream.

She was glad to have her own feelings sorted firmly, and her own betrothal confirmed if not announced. Daenerys had been nearly rapturous at the thought of another tie between their families, and Robb had been correct when he said that she would have some ideas for how to present the information to the northern lords. It was less of a conversation than Sansa had feared, and there was far less negotiation. She’d informed everyone in the inner circle who did not yet already know, and while there were some expressions of surprise from Brienne and Theon and Davos, they were no less accepting of it than anyone else.

The full announcement would be made after the wars were won. Sansa wanted to be married before they returned to Winterfell; she didn’t want a wedding in the godswood, anyway. Not again. She wanted a small one, somewhere else. Perhaps Riverrun, if Jon was amenable. If not, she didn’t mind. Just not Winterfell, and not Kings Landing. Her first two weddings had not been her choice. She wanted this third to be different in every way.

She had been avoiding Jon a bit while they were in Riverrun, mostly to save him from any unwanted scrutiny from her mother’s people. The truth was known now about his parentage and the reason for her father’s secrecy. It wasn’t as if showing him favor would be an insult to their Tully hosts, and it wasn’t anything that Jon had done. She spoke to him frequently, though not as often nor as privately as had become their custom. The Tullys were proud, and she wanted Brynden, at least, to hear the truth from her before it spread.

And there was Robb to think of, too. He and Jon still had yet to speak about it, because they were both too stubborn or too frightened to start the conversation. Sansa couldn’t do much about that but roll her eyes whenever she spotted them making conversation about anything else, but she could at least give Robb the space he needed.

Jon spent most of his time with Sam and Arya, and when she wasn’t with her sworn swords, Sansa spent most of her time with Theon. He felt more whole than he used to. He’d protected Bran admirably, and the northmen had forgiven him as much as they were able. He had even been joking with her some as they rode. He hadn’t done that in so long. He and his sister had an easiness as they spoke that made Sansa feel warm for her own siblings, and made a hopeful feeling of the possibility of future happiness continue to swell inside her.

After dismissing Brienne, Sansa did the rounds and visited with everyone. Sam and Gilly were still run rather thin tending to the wounded and dealing with some illnesses that had spread throughout the overcrowded Tully castle, but they both seemed happy and well provided for by the Tully maester, who was grateful for the help. Gilly in particular had a glowing quality to her, having been reunited with her son. Robb and Daenerys were taking a ride on Drogon, scouting ahead, and Tyrion and Varys seemed consumed with worrying about that, out on one of the balconies. Their conversation was terribly boring, so Sansa did not linger long. Jon was with Arya, the two of them standing alarmingly close to the remaining dragon, who seemed to regard them with curious amusement. Sansa forced herself to look away and stop worrying, though her heart beat faster until she was back inside and no longer had to look at it.

She knew that the dragons had helped them, but still she worried. They had so little food. What if the dragons got hungry? What if they started attacking people to feed themselves? What would they do? Nobody seemed very worried about it except her and perhaps Jaime, but Jaime was in the main hall, chatting happily with Brienne and Podrick. Brienne had a goblet of wine in front of her and appeared to have drank enough to show her affection more openly; Jaime was practically preening with the small amounts of attention she offered him. She laughed at his japes and blushed at his compliments, and Jaime bloomed beneath it. Sansa nearly went to sit with them, but then she saw that Brynden was watching her from where he had been conversing with Bran and Theon. He nodded in her direction, and she nodded back, understanding. He got up from his seat and went to her, and she led him back towards the solar out of which she and Robb had been conducting business.

“Your _cousin_ ,” Brynden said, and she prepared herself. “His existence caused your mother pain for years.”

Brynden reminded Sansa in some ways of her father. A gruff man, and uncomfortable with most emotions. He was quietly caring, and quietly kind. He had loved Sansa’s mother. It was obvious. And it was obvious that he saw something of Catelyn in Sansa, too. Littlefinger had seen the same, but it was different with Uncle Brynden. It made her proud, not frightened. It made her feel cared for. And she understood by the questioning note in his voice that Brynden wanted to understand more than he wanted to criticize. She wondered how the information got to him. Was it Bran? Sam? Robb? Any one of them could have let it slip.

“My father,” she started slowly. “Wanted to protect his nephew. He judged that the best way to do that was to keep the secret even from my mother. I don’t know what made him make that choice, but I have no doubt it was a painful one for him to make.” She could tell that her attempt at diplomacy had displeased her uncle, and so she hastened to add, “I wish he would have made a different one. It might have made things easier for my mother. For all of us, really. It wasn’t very easy for Jon, either.

Brynden made a noise of acknowledgment.

“He fought well in the battle,” he admitted. “Between he and the Kingslayer, I was uncertain who I wanted to fight alongside least, but they both held their own. He stepped in and saved my life a time or two. Your mother feared that he would take Winterfell from Robb. Bastard sons…it’s not unheard of.”

“That isn’t what’s happening,” she said.

“Isn’t it? Robb tells me the castle is going to you, and suddenly I hear rumors of a wedding.”

“We’re going to be wed, yes.” She found that she couldn’t quite bear the incomprehension on his face. Her courage failed her. “It is a politically advantageous marriage for me as well,” she pointed out. She hated how young and insecure she sounded, like she was trying to convince him, or ask him for permission. “Jon will be legitimized as a Stark, but everyone knows who his father was. By rights, he should be the one on the throne, but that isn’t what he wants.”

“He wants Winterfell,” Brynden said, and she shook her head.

“He wants his family. He wants to be a Stark. He wants…” _me_ , she wanted to say, but she found that she could not. “He wants only what I would offer him freely. You don’t have to understand, but I would not have you think that any of this has been his idea. Robb and I have had to drag him forward every step. Believe me, uncle, Jon grew up with my mother’s awareness of his status, and it did not go unnoticed.”

Brynden nodded, and he sat down, sighing as he sank into the chair.

“Forgive me,” he said. “Sometimes I get…your mother was very important to me.”

“I know. She was important to me, too. There was a time when I was so eager to please her that I would have scorned Jon as long as I knew she was watching. I thought it would make her proud. But…she was wrong to blame Jon for what she believed to be my father’s failings, and my father was wrong for allowing it to continue and never telling her the truth. It all could have been handled much more cleanly, but it wasn’t, and it can’t be fixed. We can only move forward with what we have been given.”

“You are a lot like her, you know. She was a practical girl, at times to a fault. I’m glad to see so much of her in you, but I’m also…you are a formidable woman on your own. I’m glad for that, too. When this is all over…your brother will be king of the south. You and your cousin will be wardens of the north, whatever that will mean under this new ruler. I have heard rumors that the dragon queen cannot have children.”

“That’s what she has believed, yes. I don’t know whether it will prove true, but…yes.”

“If it’s true, the future of the Targaryen line lies with you.”

“Yes.”

“It’s a good strategy.”

“It is. It will keep our family safe. Tullys as well as Starks.”

Brynden smiled a bit as he looked her over.

“Not that I would know anything about it. I’ve never been a father. But my own brother…men don’t often ask their daughters if they’re sure. If they _want_ to be married. I found the whole thing easier to avoid, but Cat never got that choice. You have one now. I hope you realize that.”

“I do, uncle,” Sansa said. Relief flooded her. Relief and a fondness for Brynden. He was more like her father than ever. “Jon is my choice. He would be my choice even if it wasn’t for politics. I love him.”

Brynden’s lips pursed slightly, and he nodded. He looked at her very carefully, perhaps searching for falseness, or a brave face hiding dissatisfaction. He would not find it.

“Then I’m glad for you,” he said, and he gave her a small smile, and it was so easy to imagine her father saying the same.

* * *

She returned to her bedroom feeling more hollowed out than she had expected. Brynden’s disapproval followed by his approval hit her stronger than she would have expected. She wondered how Robb dealt with his censure for so long.

She would miss Robb when he was in Kings Landing. She supposed that with the dragons it would be easier for him to visit, but still she dreaded parting from him again. As annoying and frustrating as he could be sometimes, she felt so much closer to him now that they were grown. Sansa didn’t want to live in Kings Landing just to be close to her brother, the way the Lannisters had done. She wanted to be in Winterfell, running her family’s home. Whatever she chose, there would be an element of sacrifice. She knew she should be grateful that she had the choice at all, and maybe she was, but…

She flopped back on her bed with a sigh, and she heard a quiet chuckle over by the window that made her bolt back up, glaring at her sister.

“You shouldn’t do that,” she said.

“I didn’t mean to,” Arya said. “Bran said to climb up here and I’d meet you.”

“Something important, then?” she asked. She tried to sound warning, but she wasn’t sure she pulled it off. She might have sounded too wobbly for that.

“I’ve been speaking with Gendry about Kings Landing,” Arya said. “And I think your Lannister pet is right.”

“About his sister being mad?”

“About the wildfire. Gendry and the others got out through the tunnels, and he said that there were always people down there. Guards and men in robes. Tyrion mentioned about the pyromancers he used when he wanted all the wildfire for the Blackwater battle. Sounds like men in robes to me. So I asked Bran.”

“What did Bran say?”

“For once he spoke plainly enough. He says that if we attack the city the way it is now, a lot of people will die.”

“I don’t think that’s too surprising.”

“A _lot_ , Sansa. Nearly everyone. You put dragons in that city, and they’re going to hit the wildfire, and Cersei wins. She dies, but she wins, too.”

“And she might not even _be_ there when we arrive,” Sansa pointed out. “She could lay the Red Keep as a trap. Get out of the city and wait for it to go up in flames. Come back and take whatever’s left of the throne.”

“Maybe,” Arya agreed. She didn’t sound convinced, but she also didn’t sound like she thought it mattered. She was still so focused on one thing at a time. Sometimes it was a relief that she was so much like how she used to be as a little girl. “I want to go on ahead.”

“Arya…”

“Not to kill the queen, so you can _relax_. We want to take in a small force and see what’s going on in the tunnels. We can evacuate as many people as we can. Warn people. Maybe help them overthrow the Goldcloaks. Kill a couple pyromancers. I don’t know. _Something_. The people that were left, Gendry said that they were frightened and helpless. I don’t want to go marching in there as part of an army before we try getting them out. They’re just going to be scared, and they’re going to get themselves killed.”

She was looking at Sansa earnestly, and Sansa sighed. It wasn’t a terrible idea. Sansa had less than pleasant memories of the people of Kings Landing, and she closed her mind sharply to the remembrance of the men who’d attacked her during the riot. Arya was right: there were people left in the city who were helpless and scared. Not all of them were like those men who had tried to hurt her. And it was better than sending Arya in as an assassin. Sansa had been prepared to support her sister in that, but she had hoped there would be some other way. She wanted Cersei dead, but she didn’t want to risk her sister in the bargain, and she thought Jaime was right: they couldn’t afford to underestimate Cersei the way Tyrion seemed poised to.

“Let’s talk to Daenerys,” she said. “We’ll see what she thinks.”

But she knew already what the answer would be. Daenerys would want to keep the casualties to a minimum, and Sansa knew that she would agree that this was the best way to do it. Arya smiled at her. She looked like Sansa’s little sister again. All innocent enjoyment. It made Sansa’s stomach hurt. She already knew that she would lose Robb. She didn’t want to have to lose Arya too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song for this chapter is Pinehouse by Martin Legrand


	78. Jaime X

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime and Arya head for Kings Landing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the first of three chapters that you're getting all at once today! The love triangle that isn't a love triangle, but only Jaime seems to realize it.

Jaime found himself in the rather hilarious position of being desperate to stay in Riverrun rather than leaving to return to Cersei.

He had been so determined to leave the first time, when he was meant to be betrothing himself to Lysa Tully. He had been even more desperate to escape the second time, when he was a prisoner, captured during a war he had helped to cause. Then, in the third, he had loathed to be back again at the Tully castle, taking it over for the Freys. And still he had felt the pull to be away and in Kings Landing again, even if the thrall of Cersei had grown more stale. In hindsight, seeing Brienne in his tent _was_ a bit of a turning point for him, so he could not entirely hate it, but it still had been a relief to leave and be on his way. But now…

They had not stopped in Riverrun for very long, but he knew the time had come for him to leave.

That didn’t at all stop him from wanting to stay. But he was trying to be a good man. A better man, at least. He could not stay, even if it was what he wanted more than anything.

Just as in Winterfell, he had been given a place of honor. Guest rooms with a soft bed and a steward to help him dress in the fine clothes Sansa insisted he had to wear as a show of respect. Edmure glared poison at him every time they crossed paths, and the one time Jaime spoke courteously to Roslin at dinner, Edmure practically vaulted over the high table to pull her away. But Jaime cared little for Edmure Tully’s opinion; _Brynden_ Tully treated him as a guest and nodded to him with a look that could perhaps be called respectful, and that was enough. The Starks liked him to a degree that seemed, frankly, irresponsible of them. His own brother had never loved him more, as evidenced by the way Tyrion was more and more showing his trust. Jaime’s heart was steady. _Kingslayer_ was whispered with respect, and he heard _Ser Jaime_ from people who were not just Brienne. Even Daenerys welcomed his company in her war room, asking for his advice and treating him kindly. Sometimes he turned his mind back toward the haze of Highgarden, and it seemed impossible that he had so quickly found himself _here_.

Still one-handed. Still wretched. But he was _trying_ , and it had gained him many more friends than enemies.

It had gained him at least one enemy, though she might not yet realize it; the relationships he had forged were everything, but they put him directly in the path of the one person he once would have done anything for. It was not a trade he had made lightly, but he could not deny it was a conscious one. He had known, all along he had _known_ that he would have to stand against Cersei, and yet it was still an unpleasant shock to find that the time had arrived.

He was still glad of the choice, no matter that it would cause him pain. He could not get enough of Brienne’s gentle smiles. She kissed him shyly, softly, as if they were both much younger than they were, every time he pulled her into abandoned libraries and storerooms and made her weak with wanting for him. He didn’t think he and Cersei had ever been so innocent, and it swam inside him, this desire to live it now. It made him feel a fool to kiss her without bedding her. A romantic fool, treating her courteously, moving so slowly, though he imagined that everyone assumed he was a debauched lecher, taking every opportunity to dishonor his warrior maid. It was only kisses passing between them. Only kisses until he could be sure that she believed his promises.

It had not taken long after her sword in him to realize that he loved her, and he had wanted her in a vague, unsettled way long before that, but this new full feeling was something else entirely. It was different from what he ever felt for Cersei. It was slower and sweeter than that, and he couldn’t get enough of her smile turned towards him or the uncomplicated way she kissed him. Gentler than Cersei, and every time there was this sense of perfection, even with how sloppy and clumsy and tentative her first few kisses were. Perfection because it was exactly what he had always wanted but could never ask for with Cersei. His heart swelled and throbbed and gentled every time she touched his graying hair or his stump or the scar she’d left on his cheek when they fought each other. Imperfections noticed and acknowledged and not ignored or pushed away. He couldn’t contain it. It was too much. Nearly every day he fought with his instincts to open his idiot mouth and suggest that they head to Riverrun’s sept and wed. Or at least announce a betrothal so that everyone would _know_. He wanted them to know.

The same thing stopped him every time: it wasn’t time yet. She wasn’t ready. He didn’t want her to promise herself to him unless she trusted him completely, and he knew that despite her assurances, she wasn’t quite there yet. She held him at a distance. An arm’s length away while he tried to push closer and was every time rebuked. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand. But he would not ask her and then risk the answer.

She would believe him when he returned. He was certain of that. It wasn’t that she was trying to test him. She would never ask him for intentional signs of devotion, the way that Cersei always had. He didn’t know what Brienne thought, exactly, about why he was still with them if she still thought it was temporary. Why stay for so long only to leave in the end? He didn’t know what the explanation for such odd behavior would be. But he knew well what Brienne’s reluctance and her habit of turning away from him and the shadowed look in her eyes meant. He knew that her heart was a fragile thing. It was easier for her when she loved him from afar and didn’t have to contend with his feelings. Easier for her to look at him and see a man she’d never have, rather than a man who loved her. He understood that every kiss was an act of trust, and he meant not to betray it. But they could not move forward if she was going to spend every moment for the rest of their lives convinced that he was only with her because he had been long enough away from his sister to loosen Cersei’s hold over him.

It wasn’t only that. He wished it was, but it never would be. There was a reason she and Tyrion could both believe in his goodness and yet expect the worst of him all the same. Cersei and his love for Cersei had ruled his life since he was a boy, and it was only now that he’d fallen in love with someone else that he understood just how deeply his sister had trained him to think that love was performing acts that proved his devotion, no matter how badly those acts tore him in two. He proved his love to Cersei by giving her what she wanted, and then she would fuck him and kiss him and promise him that they were meant to be together, and he would be satisfied with that. He would love her for it. It would do away with the pain that performing those acts had brought.

Maybe he was falling into old habits, giving in to this compulsion to _prove_ to Brienne that he had changed.

Or maybe he wasn’t proving it to Brienne at all. Maybe he needed to prove it to himself.

Or maybe it wasn’t about proving _anything_. Maybe his instinct to save Cersei and help Cersei and convince Cersei that she would have to be mad to stand against Daenerys now wasn’t about the years he’d wasted as his sister’s creature. He still did love her, as he’d told Brienne. It was a love that had changed and warped and twisted into something else, but it was still love at its core. He would love her no matter how many terrible acts she committed. He knew that because he had still loved his father. When his father lacked honor. When his father mocked him, derided him, treated him as a disappointment. When his father was disappointed with him and disgusted with him, Jaime had loved him still. He didn’t have a heart that could stop loving his family. He wasn’t made in that way.

How could he stay here, blissful and sated, without doing everything he could to try and help Cersei?

If it was Tyrion. He tried to think of it like that. _If it was Tyrion, would you go? Even if Tyrion was standing against the_ whole world _. Even if he was standing against everyone else. Wouldn’t you_ try _?_

The answer was yes. Of course it was yes. He hadn’t ever done enough for his little brother, though Tyrion had worshipped him as a child for the too-few acts of kindness that Jaime _had_ done. But he would not have abandoned Tyrion, even if Tyrion turned against Cersei.

He’d already proven that once before, hadn’t he?

He loved them both. They loathed each other, and sometimes he thought they loathed _him_ a bit for having love for both of him, but it didn’t matter. He loved them anyway.

He knew he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he didn’t do everything he could to try and help her.

* * *

It had been a courtesy, really, when Arya found him and told him everything: she and Daenerys and Sansa had discussed the possibility of Arya making her way to Kings Landing ahead of the rest of the army so that they could get an idea of the size of the wildfire stores Cersei had stockpiled. Gendry and a few others would be going as well for various reasons—evacuating as many as they could from within the city, primarily.

“I thought you might like to come,” Arya had said, casually, looking less like a child and more like a wolf than ever. “Since you seem so convinced that you can talk some sense into the queen.”

Her tone made it clear that she thought the idea ludicrous. In truth, Jaime agreed with her. He had no real hope of his words getting through to Cersei.

In a way, his motives were all selfish; he knew he had to try. Not even for Cersei, who would not listen. He had to try for himself. He could not be the man he wanted to be unless he did. So he agreed to accompany Arya and her little party, and he ignored the whining inner voice that begged him to stay in Riverrun and leave Cersei to her fate. He was not the sort of man who could listen to that voice, and he knew he would regret it for the rest of his life if he gave in. Brienne…

Brienne deserved a man who was good enough to do the right thing, even if it was painful. He had longed to be that man all his life, and now he was finally trying to be that man in practice. He could not turn away from that man now just because it would be easier. Brienne deserved that man, yes, but so did he. It was a choice _he_ was making, for himself. It felt strange to do it. Strange to choose a thing he needed instead of a thing that someone else wanted.

No, he knew he would not be able to save Cersei. But this was what he needed to feel like _he_ could be saved, and so that was what he would give himself.

* * *

It was still difficult, on that final day. He was up far too early packing his horse, for one thing. Arya was surveying everyone like the world’s smallest military commander. Gendry was readying his horse not far away, pretending not to admire Arya. Sandor Clegane was waiting by the gate, glowering at anyone who approached, ready to head out. Yara and Theon Greyjoy were already mounted, looking as unconcerned and casual as they always did. They would be heading to the coast to take command of their fleet to prepare the naval attack on Kings Landing while Jaime, Arya, and the others would head on to the city. Gendry knew the best way in without passing through the gates, so they would split there: Arya and Gendry and their party into the tunnels, and Jaime into the Red Keep.

Brienne stood in the courtyard with them, watching them. Sansa was with her, as were Robb and Jon. The Starks were watching Arya with their nervousness plain on their faces, and with no small amount of pride for their little sister.

Jaime tried not to look too much at Brienne. She had her arms folded across her chest, and she was keeping her eyes off him, as well. The time for his departure drew ever closer. Mere minutes now. Jaime was embarrassed for both of them. They were both too old for the kind of coy mutual avoidance they were doing now. Each waiting to see if the other would crack first. Jaime had every intention of returning to her as soon as he could, but he knew his sister too well to think that it was a guaranteed outcome. She’d been unpredictable when he left her, and she’d had months now to stew in her own fear and her paranoia and her hate. He would try. He had to try. But there was every chance he wouldn’t make it back, and he needed at least to say goodbye _properly._

Finally, Sansa and the other Starks went to speak to Arya, and Jaime made his move towards Brienne.

“Ser Jaime,” she said steadily. He couldn’t help but smile at her, even though he was frustrated to hear the stiffness in her voice. He shook his head, and he wanted to reach for her hand, but he knew she would not thank him for it with the others so close.

“Ser Brienne,” he answered. His voice was only a little mocking.

“I still say I should accompany you,” she said. She was looking at Arya when she said it, as if it was Arya she was most worried about. Jaime _did_ laugh, then.

“You have always been so quick to remind me that protecting the girls was _my_ oath as well as your own. You handled your end of the bargain. I should be able to handle mine, even short a hand. Lady Arya will be safe. She has her very own Hound to watch her back, now.”

He knew, of course, that that wasn’t Brienne’s main concern, but he wouldn’t do her the discourtesy of making a bigger deal out of that than it warranted.

“Brienne,” he said, when she would not look at him. “If you need the truth: it’s too dangerous for you. Don’t look at me like that. You’re already so defensive. Please trust me at least in my knowledge of my sister. Cersei is a jealous woman, and I believe she knows more about you than I would want her to. If you were to go with me…”

She shook her head and huffed out a displeased sound. She thought he was making excuses, of course. It was possible she even thought that he was leaving to be with Cersei. He’d known even when she reached for him, even when she was the one to kiss him, that it was a fear that lingered. He’d been angry about it at first. He’d marveled for a long time how easily she seemed able to see to the heart of him, and it was vaguely insulting that she suddenly lacked the power when it came to this. Now that she had kissed him and cried for him and made space in her life for him, shouldn’t she understand him better? But he wasn’t angry anymore. Time had turned it to a kind of sadness, and maybe that was worse. Brienne was nothing like Cersei. He’d put his sword through anyone who suggested they were alike. He knew that if he could only prove it to her, there would be a love between them that he had waited his whole life to experience.

But now, right now, there were times when he felt…

It wasn’t the same. He knew that. But sometimes it _felt_ the same. Similar enough to chafe.

It was hidden. Disbelieved. He was always reaching for more than was on offer. Constantly rebuked by the walls Brienne had erected around her heart. Cersei had erected those walls while insisting to herself and to him that they were walls put there by everyone else. Her circumstances were to blame. Her hurt and her pain and her hatred for a world that would keep her small and contained inside the room the walls made. She never took responsibility for the fact that her defenses kept _him_ out when he spent his whole life showing her that he would gladly scale them. With Brienne, it was years and years of protection. Building those walls brick by brick with every proof of the world’s unkindness to an ugly maid not built for beauty. She loved him, but she could not believe him. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t hers. It only _felt_ like he had done something wrong, sometimes.

But Brienne still allowed his kisses when they were in private. She still smiled at him when he spoke to her of his love. She still looked at him as if she wanted to believe him. It wasn’t like Cersei at all, and he clung to those differences in the moments when the sadness threatened to swallow the joy.

If this was the proof that she required, then this was the proof she would get. He would leave her and he would return to her. He would see Cersei again, and perhaps he would even be tempted. But he knew himself, better than he ever had, and he knew he would not be swayed. He was strong enough now.

“I want you to survive,” he told her. “That’s the most important thing to me. Fuck all the wars and the fighting. I don’t care about the throne or the dragon queen’s bloodline or any of it.”

“Jaime, you shouldn’t…” she started quietly, and he grinned at her in what he hoped was a dashing, wolfish manner.

“Shouldn’t I?” he asked. “You’re my lady, are you not? Or my Ser, if you prefer. Either way, I love you, and I have spoken of it openly. I won’t stop now just because you’re too much a stubborn fool to see it. When I return…I should warn you. I have only barely been resisting the urge to ask you to marry me at every opportunity. I don’t think I’ll be able to resist once I’ve been out of your sight for so long and then suddenly find myself back in it.”

She looked really alarmed, then, and she looked at him as if she wanted to yell at him for it. But she didn’t. She may still not trust his constancy, but she knew when he was lying, and she knew when he was not. She looked down at him with her mouth already half open. She looked nearly breathless. She closed it and shook her head.

“Jaime,” she warned.

“You’ll see, Brienne,” he said soothingly. He _did_ reach for her hand, then, and he wrapped his fingers around hers. He would not kiss her in front of all of these people. He would only try to show her as much as he could.

“I trust you, Jaime,” she said, but it felt hollow to him.

“I hope you do,” he replied. He kissed her hand. He looked her in the eye. And when he took his hand back, he brushed his knuckles gently over her cheek, with its new scar. Gnarled and terrible, but it had done nothing to her face that made a difference to him. He loved her. He hoped that this would prove it.

* * *

He rode out beside Arya Stark, who very gamely refrained from mocking him for the first hour or so.

“You’re a right idiot,” she said finally, and he laughed.

“You did better than I would have thought,” he said. “I expected it when we were still in sight of the castle.”

“I’ve been thinking it,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You’re an idiot. You shouldn’t have come. She’s never going to believe you.”

“She will when I return to her side,” he said. Arya rolled her eyes even harder, and Jaime pointed out, “she never would have believed me otherwise.”

“Is that why you’re doing this? Just to prove it to her?”

“No. I want to try and save Cersei. That hasn’t changed.”

“You know it’s not going to work. She’s going to die.” Arya was looking at him, scrutinizing him. Testing him, he realized.

“Yes. I know,” he said. She could tell when people were lying. He knew that about her. She watched him carefully. She nodded. She didn’t call him a liar, because he wasn’t lying. “But I have to try.”

Arya regarded him carefully. A little sadly, he thought. Like he was a particularly pathetic creature she had found limping by the side of the road.

“All right,” she finally said. “Just don’t get in my way, if it comes to it.”

Jaime knew he couldn’t promise that. It was easy enough to say today, but his instincts might have something very different in mind. He just nodded, instead, and Arya returned the gesture. It was clear she understood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the songs for this chapter are I Know All What I Do by Jack Garrett and Illuminate by the Kite String Tangle


	79. Cersei VI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cersei receives her brother in the throne room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my favorite chapter in all of the books is in AFFC where Cersei's in the bath, Tommen is throwing a tantrum about wanting to be best friends with Loras, and Jaime laughs at everything, including Cersei's insistence that he's super attracted to her. This chapter definitely does not have that same vibe, but I hope it's like the slightly grittier, slightly less funny version of that.

Qyburn came to her room to fetch her.

Lately, his habit had been to send Wylla when he wanted to request an audience. Cersei had yet to figure out if it was a coy acknowledgement of her secret or some kind of threat. Either way, she was startled to see him at her door.

Even if she couldn’t tell from his curdled expression, his presence alone would have let her know that something was wrong. He looked unsettled, hesitant. He’d had ample enough time on his walk to her quarters to decide what he should say, and yet he stumbled over his words several times before he spoke.

“Your brother is here, your grace,” was what he finally said.

Cersei stood. She set aside the accounts she had been attempting to read. It had been a stupid idea anyway, to try and make any sense of Jon Arryn’s budgets. Jon Arryn had had Littlefinger. Cersei had a competent enough Master of Coin, but that meant nothing when there was no coin to master. Littlefinger was the only man she knew who could produce enormous amounts of coin from very little. She would find no solace from her debts in a dead man’s ledger.

“My brother,” she said. “Tyrion?”

Her voice did not tremble. She was sure of that. But it _wanted_ to tremble. Hatred or hope, she could not tell. If Tyrion was here, that meant the end was coming. He had written her to warn her enough about it, but there had been no sign of the dragon queen’s army as of yet, and she had foolishly hoped that they would meet some more delays.

If it wasn’t Tyrion…

Qyburn shook his head, and Cersei felt some stirring inside herself. Some memory of loss, or of want, or of whatever love she still felt for Jaime despite how much he had disappointed her. A reflex that still remained from when they were young. She remembered the first time she saw him after Greyjoy’s Rebellion had finally been put down. The way he had ridden into the city on his fine white horse, his hair long and billowing as his eyes sought her out. She had loved him so fiercely. More fiercely for all the nights she had prayed for his safety and how much she had raged at the gods for having separated them.

She had learned long ago, of course, not to show any of what she felt for Jaime. Her affection was dangerous. Anything sweet had to wait until they were behind closed doors. Discovery would mean death, and it only got worse when the children were born, because discovery would mean _their_ deaths, too. Robert Baratheon was not the sort of man who would have allowed any of them to live if he discovered the deception. He could have his whores and his bastards, but her? She was expected to show him fidelity. He was the _king_ , as he delighted in reminding everyone. He could do whatever he pleased. What was she beside him? Nothing.

Jaime had always enjoyed pushing her. Looking for more. Teasing her. Enraging her on purpose. She had always wanted him more when he was like that. Impatient and demanding. _Needing._ Maybe it was just the need that she liked. Robert played at strength, but he was a weak-willed man, and a fool besides, but she never could be angry or violent with him. He never would have let her. He would have thrown her across the room if she tried.

Jaime, though. Jaime let her do whatever she wanted, and he never took any of it seriously. They weren’t like that. They understood each other. They craved each other. They were meant to be together, but only where no one else could see. Jaime had always been an idiot about that, and it always left her to be the one to think of it. Stopping him from showing the children too much affection. Stopping him from making japes that could be misconstrued by anyone who was listening. Keeping them alive had been a burden that fell to her, because Jaime could never see how he put them in danger every time he slipped up or showed too much of his want for her. People would see them. People would _know_ what they were.

Qyburn already knew. Of that, she had no doubt. He had looked at her too purposefully and spoken too pointedly too many times for her to doubt it. Still, it was instinct to react with measured indifference.

“It took him long enough,” she said. She smoothed out her dress. Her crown still sat on her head from when she had met with the small council earlier, and she made certain that it was straight and gleaming in her mirror. Did she look queenly enough? Did she look powerful? “I will receive him in the throne room.” She had no reason to doubt Jaime. He had done exactly what she had expected: he had played along, and he had survived, and he had made his way back to her. But there was no harm in being cautious, and it would be good for Jaime to remember what she was. 

“Very good, your grace,” Qyburn said. He sounded wary, but that was unsurprising. He had so little faith in her now. Just like the rest of the fools who pretended to stand with her while working against her when they thought she wasn’t watching. Now that Jaime was back, perhaps she would have enough power to show them all what a mistake it was to go against their queen. 

* * *

She was seated on her throne when Jaime was shown in. Qyburn stood at her right side. In earlier years, Jaime would have mocked her for keeping him waiting, barely hiding his true anger and his real annoyance, but he didn’t seem angry now. He looked so unlike himself that her eyes darted to the space where his right hand should have been, as if to reassure herself that this stranger in front of her was still Jaime. He looked weary. Old. His hair and beard were both longer than they had been when she last saw him. Was this really her twin? Would she look into the mirror and find her own face lined and changed? They had once looked so like each other.

His missing hand was obvious, giving him that lopsided appearance she so hated. He had not replaced his golden hand with anything else. The sleeve was empty, though at least he’d had the good grace to cover that hideous scarred stump with a bit of blue silk. He was wearing fine clothing. A new-looking doublet, decorated with delicate embroidery. Something about it drew Cersei’s eye, and it quivered beneath her mask, just on the edge of her understanding. She didn’t allow herself to think of it. Sansa Stark had been a silly little girl obsessed with embroidering, but that meant nothing. Jaime had had the clothing commissioned. He must have wanted to look as well as he possibly could when seeing her again for the first time.

“Brother,” she said. He was still quite far from the throne. The Mountain stood between them, at the foot of her dais. Was it _that_ which frightened Jaime? He hovered. His expression was impossible to read. He approached slowly. He didn’t speak. As he got closer, she could tell that he was unsettled, and she found that she could not discern why. There was a time when she would have been more confident in her reading, and that fact stoked the flames of her anger. He had been too long away again. Why did he always return to her so changed? He once would have tried immediately to win her over with loving words and kind gestures. Reminders that he still adored her. She was glad he didn’t try it this time. She would not have believed them.

“Cersei,” he said. He stopped his approach, and he looked up at the Mountain with a slightly curled lip. A sneer. He was still wearing Joffrey’s sword at his hip, which was absurd and infuriating. Why had he not been disarmed? Were her guards really so stupid? He could kill her just as easily with the one hand. Jaime— _her_ Jaime—he was strong enough, and he would find a way if he truly wished it. She wasn’t sure if even the Mountain would be enough to stop him if he were so determined.

_He wouldn’t_ , she thought. _Not Jaime._

No. He would never have even contemplated it, before. But he was not her Jaime any longer. She didn’t know this new man who stood before her in his embroidered doublet, wearing the beard she’d always hated.

_If he wanted to look good for you, he would have shaved it_ , she realized, and something tingled along her spine. Some edge of awareness, of wariness. The doublet was black, and it made the embroidery stand out all the more. Their house seal was on his breast, the lion done expertly, with gorgeous details. But the thread of it was Stark gray. Silver like the new lines in his hair and beard. There was a sun above it, and a crescent moon below it. A sun. Martell? The dragon queen was allied with Dorne, she knew.

_You know what the sun is. You know the moon, too_. But no.

“You didn’t write to tell me you were coming,” she said. She watched his expression for a reaction, and found it difficult to do so with that awful beard on his face. It made him look so stiff, unyielding.

“No,” he said. “I didn’t.”

“Tell me. Is it true what Tyrion wrote about the army of the dead? I know that our little brother has always liked to exaggerate. And he always did so love the stories.”

“It’s true,” Jaime answered. Simple and unadorned with anything else. He was not giving her anything to work with. It felt intentional. It felt designed to aggravate her, and it was _working_.

“Then I suppose I should congratulate you. You always hated when they called you _Kingslayer,_ even though it was exactly what you were. Then is it also true that you have been given a position in the dragon queen’s army?”

Jaime stared up at her. He didn’t look away, like she expected him to. He didn’t flush with anger. He met her gaze.

“It’s true,” he said. “She has pardoned me for my crimes.”

“ _Crimes_ ,” Cersei drawled. She understood him now. _She has pardoned me for my crimes._ Absolution. Of _course_ that was what it was. There were so many stories about her beauty. Daenerys Targaryen, and her fair face and the men who followed her everywhere as if entranced by her. She had already married the northern king, but apparently that wasn’t enough for the little whore. She needed to have Jaime, too. The man who had killed her father. _A younger, more beautiful queen._ Cersei tried not to let her anger show, but she could feel that she was gripping tight to the arms of her chair, and she knew that she was unsuccessful. “Is it a crime to help your family?”

“Cersei…” he started. He was losing patience. She was almost more offended by that than anything else. He wasn’t the one who decided. _She_ was queen.

“I could have you thrown in the dungeons,” she reminded him. “I could leave you there to rot. The Black Cells are so deep you’ll never be found. Your precious queen will think you have betrayed her.”

Jaime’s expression wavered, then, and she could not contain her glee. _Good_. He was angry. _Good_. He was afraid. He had been away for too long, but now that he was back, she would make sure that he remembered how things stood between them. It wasn’t so surprising, after all, that he would forget. Jaime was so easily influenced by others. Tyrion and this queen of his must have been persuasive. But they couldn’t stand against her. No one had ever been able to tempt him away from her for long.

“I’m hoping you’ll listen to me instead,” he said. He was so clearly trying _not_ to react. She had already won. He was just too stupid to see it.

“Listen to you? On behalf of your new queen? You used to know me better than that.”

“You have no chance against her army, Cersei,” Jaime said. “She has the advantage in every way. Even if you’re able to keep the walls of this city intact, she and her people will find their way in. I have marched with them. Fought alongside them. I have stood in her council meetings. Cersei, there is no winning for you.” Cersei was not expecting that. She hated him, for a moment. How dare he? How dare he come here and try to get her to surrender. Her _throne_. Her power. He should have known. He should have known why she needed it. He should understand. He was her twin. He had been her mirror all her life. He should have _known_. Instead, he was like all the rest. He was old and gray and one-handed and a useless, wretched creature. Trying to wrest away what little she had managed to take for herself. 

“Is that all you have to say?” she asked. She expected him at least to flinch back from her cold tone. It was always the easiest way to get him to give in, before. He was always so despairing when he displeased her and brought her coldness back. Now, he stood in front of her, steady. He didn’t flinch. He met her eyes. He was changed, weak, his voice thin as he told her that she had no chance of winning. Who was this man? Who was he, and what was that expression on his face? She didn’t know him.

_Who is she?_ She could almost hear him wondering _. I don’t know this woman._

No. She had not changed. It was Jaime who had disappointed her. Jaime who had failed her. Jaime who had returned to stand in front of her with that absurd doublet and the beard that she hated. Jaime who served a new queen. She had been so sure…

_You don’t know him at all._

_You never knew him._

“The queen can be merciful,” Jaime said.

_A younger, more beautiful queen._

“ _I_ am the queen,” she reminded him. Qyburn glanced at her, and she knew he was right. If anyone else had shown her this kind of disrespect…

_But it’s Jaime_ , she reminded herself. _It’s Jaime. It must be to help me in some way. It must be_ for _me. He must be right. He wouldn’t tell me these things unless it was to protect me. You_ know _him._

“You won’t be queen for long,” Jaime said, and it took her every iota of self-control to keep from getting up out of her chair. She wanted to storm to him and slap him. She wanted to grab him and kiss him and demand that he love her as he once had. She wanted to…

No. She had composure. She was the queen. She looked down at him, and she imagined that he wasn’t a man she had loved at all. He was a nobody. He was a nothing of a man. Gray. One-handed. What did he have that she wanted, anyway? Nothing. She had been deluding herself to think that he was at all the same as he used to be. Deluded to think that anyone was her mirror image, to think that she still _needed_ him. She had needed him when she was powerless, and she wasn’t powerless any longer.

“I will not surrender to a pretender to the throne,” she said. “Her father was king once. He lost the throne. If she wants it back, she has to take it from me.”

“She’s prepared to do that.” 

“Oh, is she?” Cersei mocked. “Have you had many personal conversations with this dragon queen, dear brother? I hear she’s beautiful. But I also hear that your own tastes lately have been…rather questionable.”

_The sun. You know the sun._

It was a momentary clarity that made her say the words, and the look on Jaime’s face instantly validated it. Yes. She knew the sun, and the moon, too. They had been embroidered on _her_ clothing, at Joffrey’s wedding. Cersei had disregarded the rumors Qyburn had been feeding her. She had cast those pieces of parchment into the fire as if destroying them could make them disappear. It was a humiliating thing, when the scandal was no longer that she was fucking her own twin, but that her twin had sought comfort in the arms of a beast. She had refused to believe it. But it was _true_. That hideous woman, sworn to Sansa Stark. The sun on his doublet. The crescent moon. The lion. Two sigils joined. No, he wasn’t just fucking the creature.

Jaime had frozen. His expression was nearly blank, but not quite blank enough. She saw something coiled and tense within him. He had looked at her like that before. Always in moments when she got too close to the truth of something that he had been trying to hide. It was almost a relief that she still knew him. She smiled.

“Cersei,” he managed, warning. “I came here to try and _help_ you. Why can’t you see that? Are you so delusional you…”

“Me? _I’m_ delusional?” she asked with a laugh. “Look at you. Pretending at this selflessness. You were always insufferable about it as a boy, but it’s so unbecoming on a man of your age. Would the Starks accept you if they knew what you’d done to their brother? You have always been a fool for the exact kind of honor that is useless to anybody. Ask Ned Stark what good honor did him. Ask Oberyn Martell what use justice was to him, in the end. Ask father…”

“Father was never honorable,” Jaime said, and she laughed again.

“Jaime,” she said, sweetly. “You poor, golden fool. Listen to yourself. Is that why you’ve fallen into the bed of a woman said to be so hideous, she…”

“Enough, Cersei,” Jaime said, and Cersei flared.

“I will _say_ when it’s enough,” she said. She stared him down, and he stared back at her. She felt a twinge of something. Nervousness, perhaps. She wasn’t used to him not backing down. He always did.

“I came here today to warn you,” he said. He spoke slowly, clearly. “Because I love you, and because I wanted to save you. I have delivered that warning, and it’s clear that you don’t mean to listen.”

She could hang him from the battlements with the rest of the messengers. She tried to imagine it. Crows pecking out his beautiful eyes. Insects and flies bloating his perfect body. They would gnaw at his fingers and take his other hand. He would swing there, and she would always know which one was his, even when it had been reduced to a skeleton. She would feel the copy of his bones within her own body. She couldn’t.

“I don’t,” she said. Her voice was hoarse. “But I wish to send a warning of my own. And to offer you an opportunity.”

The idea had come to her suddenly, and yet it seemed impossibly good. She rose to her feet, and she walked down the dais until she stood in front of him. She smiled. He looked at her warily. _Yes_ , she thought. _He’s simply misguided._ _He sees no way to have the thing he truly craves, and so he seeks it elsewhere._

“An opportunity,” he prompted flatly. He eyed the Mountain, who had followed her closely, and now stood over her shoulder. _Yes_ , she thought. _Be frightened of him._ _Be frightened of me. But want me, as you always have._

“Kill her,” she whispered. She stepped closer still. She looked up into Jaime’s eyes. Standing so close, she knew it always made her look beseeching. Vulnerable. It was his weakness. He looked even more tired from here. “Kill the dragon bitch and return to me with our soldiers. Without her, the armies will crumble, and we will have no more enemies. Anyone who would oppose us could be put to the sword, and then it would be just us. Just you and me. The way it always should have been. I will marry you in front of the gods and everyone. The world will know whose father you were. And any children yet to come will be yours in name and in nature. Jaime, please. I love you. I love you. I love _you_. Kill her at once, and I will be yours.”

She willed him to believe her. He was still looking at her. Watching her. He still was impossible to read.

“You’re a fool, Cersei,” he said, quietly enough that she was the only one who heard. Before he turned and left her, he gave her a lingering look of disgust that she would see behind her eyelids later. He always wanted her the most when he was disgusted. She still knew him. She smiled as she watched him walk out, his back straight and his mind whirling.

He would choose her, she knew. He could pretend all he wanted, but it always came back to her, in the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Hostage by Black Math


	80. Brienne XI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brienne has a few revelations.

The army set out for Kings Landing three days after Jaime and Arya left Riverrun. Brienne had not spent a fully peaceful night since.

There was too much to worry about. Too much to prepare for. Not that Brienne was called upon to do much in the way of preparations, but _Sansa_ was, and Brienne followed her and worried with her as they drew closer to the capital. In her quiet moments, Brienne worried on her own. About Arya and Gendry and the people of Kings Landing. About everyone and what would happen to them when it came time to fight again. About Sansa and Robb and the way they looked more burdened the closer they got to their destination.

About Jaime.

Those worries kept her from sleeping even though her body was exhausted at the end of every day of traveling. When she _did_ manage to sleep, there were dreams.

She wasn’t the only one with dreams. So soon after such an impossible battle, of course the fighters dreamed of it. It had been days and days of fighting. Long enough for the routine of it to seep into their minds. She _still_ woke most mornings reaching for her sword, imagining that she heard the bells tolling to call her back to the field of battle. Podrick often woke from dreams in which the dead swarmed the walls of Winterfell. Tyrion had mentioned that he dreamed of dead Starks rising in the crypts. Not one of them remained untouched by the war against the dead. Some men screamed themselves awake, and Brienne would hear the echo of it in her tent, where she slept alone.

Jaime, she knew, also suffered from nightmares. He had suffered from them when Locke took his hand, and he had suffered from them when they shared a tent and body heat on the way north from Dragonstone. He suffered them quietly, gasping awake. She only ever heard it because she was so close. He would sit up, disoriented, and she would only have to say his name to bring him back to himself. He would be shaking afterward, but he wouldn’t say anything else. On the road to Winterfell, he would lie back next to her and huddle close. _For the cold_ , she told herself, though his significant words and his significant looks before they bedded down at night would always remind her of the love he had claimed while drugged and exhausted.

She had not asked him about his dreams when they fought the dead. She knew that most of the time he woke with dark circles beneath his eyes and a grim set to his jaw that spoke of new tension. And when the dead were vanquished, when they were back to sleeping in separate spaces, it was always easy to tell when he had been plagued by nightmares. He would reach for her and kiss her early and often when they met again in the mornings. It didn’t take much to see the reflection of her own neediness after particularly brutal nightmares in which he fell to the wights or in which he never rose after Highgarden.

She wished to ask him about them now, though most of that was just a wish to ask him about anything. She had grown used to his presence again, and even days after he left she would be surprised to look about and not see him anywhere. It was the same after they returned to Kings Landing the first time. She had been so used to him, and then he was gone, and she had to remember what it had been like before he was constantly in her presence.

Once Jaime left Riverrun, gone back to his sister in Kings Landing, she had nightmares of a different sort. Often they were formless, difficult to figure out. Jaime was a feeling. A shape in the darkness. A thing that receded from her. Sometimes it was fully him. Jaime. Beautiful as ever, but cruel as he ignored her and turned away.

They were humiliating, telling dreams, and she hated them. Felt betrayed by her own mind for having had them.

_Jaime can leave_ , she told herself. _I knew he would. I will survive it if he does_.

And yet grief would open up inside her and take her by surprise when she woke. Because even though the dreams were not real, they may as well have been. She had assured herself constantly of the inevitability of his leaving in part as a way to try and protect herself when the moment came. And yet she had failed; preparing had done nothing to help.

_I never should have kissed him_ , she thought often, but it was always a passing thought, gone quickly. Perhaps she _shouldn’t_ have kissed him, but she was glad she did. No matter what happened now, she would remember it. Perhaps it was little enough to hold on to, but she had never expected even as much as she had been granted. All her life, she had been mocked and sneered at and giggled about by everyone around her. Her father made some attempts to shield her from the worst of it, but he was busy with his other pursuits, and he did not notice much. The best thing he did for her was allowing Ser Goodwin to teach her how to use a sword. He wasn’t a father made for more overt demonstrations of support. Selwyn Tarth was a taciturn man, and he had raised a taciturn daughter.

It was a protection of its own kind, in a way. Being taciturn. Wearing a blank face that hid its hurts skillfully. It was another gift her father had given her. Perhaps she was mocked and derided, yes, but they never saw how deeply wounded she was. She carried it all close.

When men mocked her, when they pretended to want her for the jape of it, when they turned to their friends and spoke about the great ugly beast as if she was too stupid to understand their speech. She bore it because she had to, because there was no other choice. She refused to let them win.

No man had ever wanted her without it being some kind of cruel joke, but Jaime…

That he wanted to kiss her, she had no doubt. He was cruel in his ways sometimes, but she knew him too well to think he would coax kisses from her from some reason other than wanting. She had no doubt that he _cared_ for her. He had shown that to her countless times, now. Want and care were powerful things, and she was glad that she had inspired them in the man she loved. But want and care were nothing when held up against the mirror that was his twin. She little understood their obsession for one another, but she didn’t _need_ to understand it. She wasn’t meant to understand it. It was something separate. If she must love Jaime, then she must love those parts of him that she could not understand. Perhaps she must even love those bitter parts that she didn’t particularly like. Or if not love them, accept them. Acknowledge them. Not just close her eyes and pretend that they didn’t exist.

She wished it could be different. For her own sake, yes. Obviously, yes. But for _his_ as well. So many things went back to Highgarden. She was always on that burning field, fighting Jaime, tasting mingled salt and smoke while she tried to save him and he tried to destroy himself. She still didn’t know exactly why he had been so determined to die in that fight, and she didn’t understand why he was so determined to return to Cersei now. And, like Highgarden, there was a kind of helplessness as she was forced to stand on the side and watch him self-destruct. She loved him. She had loved him when the world regarded him as an oathbreaking monster, and she loved him now that _Kingslayer_ was a name spoken with awe. If only her love was enough to save him. But that wasn’t how things worked. The years had done well to teach her that she was not a delicate maiden from a song whose sweet words would be enough to move a man. What little she had been given would have to be enough, and she would have to hope that Jaime would realize his own worth one day, apart from the ways in which he could be of use to the people he loved.

She spoke to no one of her thoughts on this. She wondered sometimes if anyone knew. It seemed people had known for years of her foolish feelings for Jaime, but could they tell that those feelings had been answered? Nothing had passed between them more dishonorable than kisses in a quiet room, and the heat and want that came and went with those moments. There was really nothing to know or to see. She told herself that often. Every time Sansa sent her a smile that looked too secret. Every time Robb sought her out for sparring because he knew she and Jaime used to spar before the evening meal and that she would perhaps like the company now that Jaime was gone. She knew that she was difficult to read, and she refused to let anyone know that she was unhappy or nervous or anything at all. She helped the soldiers train. She guarded Lady Sansa’s back. She joined in on missions of strategy to discuss how they would attack the Red Keep.

_Jaime will be in there when we do_ , she thought often, unable to keep herself from thinking it. Or perhaps he would have persuaded his sister to run away with him. _Perhaps he will be safe._

None of it, she made sure, showed on her face or in her manner. There was pride in hiding it. Pride in keeping it within her, where only she could know for sure.

When they were traveling, it was easier. She slept poorly, but no one knew. She kept herself steady, and she kept herself strong. She had no other choice. They marched ever closer to Kings Landing, and she would not think of what was waiting for them. She would not think of the fact that he had suggested that he wanted to marry her, because he would come to his senses when he was in Kings Landing, and she knew it. She would not think that she might have to stand against him, because there was nothing she could do to prevent it now. She would not wonder if something she said, or something she _did_ , could have made a difference. She would not think of him at all.

There was no use in imagining how things could have been if he had stayed.

* * *

She was awake late, sitting with Sansa as Sansa finished writing her letters for the day. Correspondence flew between Sansa and all of her allies, and she was constantly at work, writing and reading and planning. She had almost finished for the night when Podrick found them to announce that Jaime had returned, and Brienne didn’t understand. She didn’t understand when Sansa looked towards her and smiled. She didn’t understand when Sansa rushed to get ready. She didn’t understand even when they entered the main tent to find Jaime standing before the war table, across from Robb and Daenerys. He looked tired and worn-down, but strangely _fine_. Strangely light. He turned and looked at Brienne, and he smiled at her, and only _then_ did she understand. And even then, it was a vague, confused kind of understanding. She knew what she saw. She knew that his eyes brightened as he looked at her. She knew that he was standing in front of her, which meant that he had traveled hard, and had not remained in Kings Landing for long. And yet none of those things could be true. She heard her old septa's voice, telling her that no man would want her and that she would be lucky if she could find someone who would _tolerate_ an ugly wife for the prize of the island she would inherit. She heard her own doubts, her own fears, internalized ever since she was old enough to know what beauty was. She heard jeering, laughing boys and their cruel nicknames.

And yet Jaime Lannister stood before her. He had not stayed with his beautiful sister. He had professed his love, and she had disbelieved him at every turn, because it was impossible, and yet…

_And yet._ She couldn’t finish the thought. There had to be some other reason he had returned. Cersei's plans were too diabolical for him to stomach. She had rejected him and sent him away. She had sent him back with terms and he was planning to return to her once he got an answer from Daenerys. _Anything_.

“Lady Sansa. Ser Brienne.” Jaime spoke to them both with courtesy when they entered, and Brienne murmured something appropriate in response, though she hardly knew afterward what it was that she had said. Daenerys was smiling, and so was Robb. They were amused by something that had been spoken before Brienne and Sansa entered. Jaime saw her looking, and he smiled wider. “They’ve been informed of the mission I’ve been given by my sister,” he said. His smile and voice were sharp and bitter and furiously amused. A riot of emotions she could hardly understand. “I’ve been tasked with killing Daenerys.”

Daenerys let out an amused chuckle, spreading her hands in a magnanimous gesture.

“I don’t think there has ever been such a polite assassin,” she marveled. “You’d almost get away with it, I think, with that boldness. Thank you, Ser Jaime, for the warning.”

“Of course,” Jaime answered. He was still looking at Brienne, but then he looked away. _Tore his eyes away_ , Brienne thought, unbidden. _He tore his eyes away._ It was the only way to describe his reluctance, and she still didn’t understand. _She_ didn’t bother to take her eyes off him. He was the focus of everyone’s eyes. No one would find it odd if she watched him, and so he did. His smile when he turned back towards Daenerys was a small, tired thing. “My sister didn't want to hear that I had made my choices. I fear that the pressures of the crown have done their worst on her. She wouldn’t listen, and she refused to understand. I offered her mercy, and she ordered me to kill you. She won’t be stepping down.”

“I expected as much,” Daenerys said. Her eyes lingered on him, her expression thoughtful. “You said when you first arrived that your sister promised a reward for my assassination. What does she even have? Varys’ spies say that she has run afoul of the Iron Bank, and they won’t lend her any more money. She has the Golden Company for now, but is nearly out of the funds to pay them. She has nothing.”

“Marriage, your grace,” Jaime said.

_Marriage_. Brienne’s stomach would have turned to stone once to hear him say that, but he looked amused now, and at last Brienne understood. It was an awareness, a tightening in her stomach. It was Jaime’s contented sighs when he lay beside her in her tent at night. It was the way he always smiled when he kissed her. It was the way he held her face in horror when she was bitten, and the way he tried desperately to get her to turn back to get help.

He had turned Cersei down.

She had offered to marry him, and he had turned her down. _Why_?

_Not for me_ , she told herself quickly, before she could allow hope to creep in. _You must not think that_.

But why not? When every proof was literally standing in front of her.

“She asked you to kill me, and in exchange she would marry you?” Daenerys asked. Her amusement felt inappropriate, until Brienne realized that the rest of them were amused, too. Jaime looked less so. He looked rather sad. Thoughtful.

“She has little else to offer, like you said,” he pointed out. “I doubt I’m the first ally she’s proposed marriage to.”

Something like relief spread through Brienne. He was jealous. He would not be content being one of several for Cersei’s affections. She could understand that. Make it make sense. Make it follow the orderly rules of the world.

When Brienne was younger, Septa Roelle's preparations had seemed cruel and undeserved. What had Brienne ever done except to be born sturdy and unladylike? But as she grew older, as she fell in love first with Renly and then with Jaime, and as Jaime began to show her his attentions and kiss her and claim his love for her, Septa Roelle's intervention began to feel more like a kindness. Brienne wasn’t some foolish girl who would believe the words men spoke to her. She knew what she was, and she knew what she was not. Women like Sansa and Daenerys could compel men to do anything by virtue of their sweet smiles and their clever minds. Women like Cersei were the same. Brienne had many friends now. She had people who cared for her despite her awkwardness and her unpleasant looks. She had the friendship of men because she was reliable and honorable and because she listened well and was pleasant enough company. She knew her own worth. She knew that men like Robb and Jaime liked her. She knew that Jaime had perhaps, for a time, mistook that for love the way Brienne loved him. But Septa Roelle had had the right of it. There was nothing more to it than that.

Her instinct had been right, and perhaps she felt some pride for expecting it, even though she still felt the hurt that she had tried to avoid. Jaime had been lonely, and frightened. The loss at Highgarden had shaken him, and he was sure Cersei would hate him for it. He had been without his sister, traveling in the cold north, and from what he said, his sister was hardly the same woman anymore. He had reached for Brienne because she was familiar, and because she was _there_. It made sense. It was the _only_ thing that made sense.

And yet there was that voice inside her. That tiny, rebellious voice.

_He asked me to marry him._

_He turned Cersei down._

“We’re glad to have you back, Jaime,” Sansa said when Daenerys said nothing in response to his declaration. “What else can you tell us about the wildfire stores? Were you able to speak with Arya before you left?”

“I was. She confirmed my suspicions. Cersei has not been idle. Her Hand has seen to stocking the city with wildfire. I hardly know where he has been getting the funds for it, because it certainly isn’t from the crown, and yet he controls the pyromancers. Your sister was able to use her skills to infiltrate them. Everywhere beneath the streets and beneath the houses, there are barrels of the stuff. If you bring your dragons into the city, you are walking into a trap. If you bring your _army_ into the city, you are walking into a trap.” He looked at Daenerys with a kind of hopeful desperation, and she nodded, and she waved her hand for him to continue.

Brienne listened as he spoke. She watched his anxiousness and his relief and his exhaustion. He talked about evacuating at a faster pace. He talked about the work that Arya was doing, but how there were few people who trusted her, and fewer who would risk taking her at her word. Cersei had made everyone afraid with her garish display of power over the battlements, where everyone from genuine traitors to men who had been in her way as she walked had been hanged and left to rot. Her new Goldcloaks were little more than hired thugs, but they wore their power openly, and the smallfolk cowered from them.

Jaime spoke with the fire of someone who wanted to survive the battle to come, who wanted to _win_ the battle to come. Brienne was glad, but it troubled her.

When he was sick and in the grips of fever, all that time ago when he lost his hand, Jaime had rambled and raved and sobbed about how he could not yet die because Cersei lived. Ever since then, Brienne had thought it obvious that his desperation to be with her, his desperation to _protect_ her, was linked to that feeling of impossibility of separation.

But he was here, in this tent, planning what could only be his sister’s execution. His expression was set, and he was plainly unhappy about it, but he was unflinching. He understood what had to be done, and he was doing it. She never thought he would be able to. She was almost proud. But she was sorry, too. She hoped he would survive this. His wish to die in Highgarden was still a memory she carried with her everywhere, and she was afraid of what losing Cersei would do to him. He seemed so much more solid, so much more himself, than he had at Highgarden, but she knew how shock could keep people from feeling wounds fully until long after they had been struck.

Then the meeting was over, and they were dismissed. Sansa clasped Jaime in a quick embrace, accepting his sword to guard her once more. Brienne stood by. She watched. She could not look away from him. She wanted to leave, but she would not be too craven to face him.

Sansa excused herself, spotting Jon across the camp, dismissing both her sworn swords for the rest of the evening. And then it was just Brienne and Jaime, and Jaime was looking at her.

What would he say? What would he do? This couldn’t possibly be his choice. To stay. To be with her.

Septa Roelle’s voice, sharp with disdain, reminded her of all her faults.

_And yet._

Jaime had not spoken a single word to her, and his look was somehow louder than speech would have been. Hopeful. Wanting. He had held her as he slept. He had pulled her close for kisses. He had trusted her, and she was supposed to trust him too. How could she? How could she believe that he wanted her? It was impossible.

_And yet._

When he approached her, she must have looked warning, because he stopped where he was, and he looked up at her with a mingling of amusement and dread.

“As you can see, I’ve returned,” he said. “And yet you look at me as if you still think I won’t. You truly didn’t trust me to come back, did you?” When she couldn’t answer, he laughed. A bitter, wounded sound. “When I was in her throne room, she threatened to lock me up in the Black Cells, so deep none of you would ever find me. And do you know what my first thought was? It wasn’t horror at how Cersei had so quickly turned against me when I traveled all that way to _help_ her. It wasn’t fear at the thought of whatever tortures Qyburn would inflict. No. My _very_ first thought was that you would _never_ believe I had been taken. You would spend your life convinced that I had abandoned you, because you have expected it at every turn. I have been open with you about my feelings and my hopes. Far more open than you have been with me.”

This last part was almost worried. Fearful. Realizing, almost.

“I have told you that I love you,” she said, but it didn’t seem to bring him much relief.

“You have, but you have always sounded so _angry_ about it. And you still don’t believe me.”

“It’s impossible to believe,” she said.

“Impossible? Is this to be it, then? Do you requite feats of strength like in the old tales? I was never very good at proving my devotion to Cersei. She always saw some insidiousness that wasn’t in me. But by all means, if there’s some trial I’m supposed to endure to prove my worth to you, I’ll do it. I don’t give up easily on the people I love. Surely you can believe _that_ , at least, even if you can’t believe it’s you.”

It was spoken so calmly, so casually, and yet it bit into her heart. Perhaps he didn’t see it for the insult that it was; he loved Cersei. The comparison was perhaps not meant to be an unfavorable one. But the idea that her reluctance to believe him felt to him like Cersei's coldness…

“I don’t require anything from you,” she said.

“Just like you required nothing from Renly. But I’m the furthest thing from Renly. Perhaps you thought Renly was a safe man to love. Perhaps you knew that he would never love you in return. But I am not Renly. I _do_ love you. I kept my head in that meeting with my sister, and I came back to you instead of challenging her and meeting an end in the Black Cells because I knew I had to. For _you_. I would marry you now if I didn’t think you deserved a proper ceremony in your father’s house. Brienne, you understood me well enough once. I know you’re frightened. I’m frightened, too. I’ve never loved anyone but Cersei before, and now I find myself loving you. It isn’t easy for me, either.”

He gave her a smile that was so dashing and so handsome that it nearly sent her reeling.

“You can’t,” she blurted. “It doesn’t make _sense_.”

“Is it still because of your looks? Is that _all_? I keep thinking you have judged me unworthy, or inconstant, but it’s still only that. Brienne. Do you really think I loved Cersei because she’s beautiful?”

“I can think of no other reason,” Brienne admitted, and for some reason that made Jaime laugh loudly. He squeezed her shoulder and sagged with relief.

“You should know more than most how fleeting beauty is. Look at me now and remember me as I was, and you try to tell me honestly that there hasn’t been a difference.”

She did as he asked, though of course it was absurd. He had more lines on his face, yes. His beard was grayer. The puckered skin of his stump was not a sword hand. Still. He remained the most beautiful man she had ever seen. She had been convinced at one point that it was Renly, but now she saw how wrong she had been. Renly did not have Jaime’s jaw, nor his smile, nor his eyes.

“You’re still beautiful,” she said to him sincerely, and he seemed to grow softer in front of her as a result.

“Well,” he said. “I have to thank you for that. But beauty fades, was my point. We change and we grow old and we lose our strength. If we aren’t to die young and beautiful, we all go through it. But that’s only the beauty on the outside. I have no interest in that.”

“It’s easy for you to _say_ ,” she pointed out. “You have always been beautiful, and you have always loved a beautiful woman.”

“Not always,” he pointed out with a grin.

“Jaime…”

“You should have seen Cersei when she was going through her adolescence. Truly, she suffered a humiliating several years.”

But he was teasing her, and she could not help but smile at him. It felt helpless, uncontained.

“Jaime,” she said.

She was wavering and weak, and she wanted _so badly_ to kiss him. He sensed it, and he pressed up on his toes to kiss her scarred cheek. She felt his perfect lips press against the ruined skin there, and her eyes pricked with tears. What would Septa Roelle say about this? What would her explanation be for why Jaime would do _this_?

Septa Roelle wouldn’t understand it. She wouldn’t understand it any better than Brienne did. But Septa Roelle didn’t know everything.

“If we were on Tarth,” he said. His voice was low and rumbling, and his expression beautiful as he turned his face up and refused to let her look away. “If we were doing it properly. What would you say? Would you say yes? Would you marry me?”

He was so close to her. He looked so much lighter. His conversation with Cersei had changed him. Why _shouldn’t_ she believe it? It made her so happy when she believed it. When she kissed him. When she held him close in sleep. Maybe she still wasn’t sure. Maybe she still didn’t quite know _what_ to believe. But it made her happy, and she wanted to be happy. She wanted him to be happy, too.

“Yes,” she said, and he smiled, and she saw the truth at last in it. In his smile, in his eyes, in the way he brushed his thumb over her lip before kissing her.

Yes, she saw the truth, and she felt it racing along her skin, like the relief of scratching an itch that went deeper than the surface. The force of the realization. The suddenness of understanding.

The truth. Jaime loved her. Jaime had chosen her. And Septa Roelle had been a fucking idiot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Unknown by Tuvaband


	81. Jon IX

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon has conversations with both Arya and Robb

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahhhh officially only 10 chapters from the end! You're getting two chapters today, and hopefully at least 3 tomorrow!

Arya melted out of the shadows with a skill that Jon envied.

He had always been graceful, and Winterfell's fighting masters had praised it whenever he proved the usefulness of that grace with steel in his hand. It was one way in which he had always been better than Robb; Robb's style was more blunt. Less intricate. Jon’s fluidity had always kept Robb guessing, and Jon had been proud whenever Robb exclaimed in frustration about Jon’s skills.

Arya made both of them look clumsy and pathetic. She made everything she did look simple. She was smug about it, too; she smirked at him when she realized she had startled him.

“There you are,” she said, as if she had been waiting for hours. She was dirty, and her hair was lank from probably days of not washing it as she went in and out of the tunnels and led out as many people as he could. She was so much his little sister. Sometimes she seemed like another person entirely, but not now. She always used to run around at Winterfell, covered in cobwebs and dust. She and Bran both, always playing around in rooms that no one had been to in years. He couldn’t help but reach for her and hug her. She grumbled like a cat discontented to be petted, but she didn’t pull away until he did, and he knew she had missed him too. 

“You’ve been doing well,” he said. “Your refugees have been arriving at camp for days now.”

“Not enough of them.” Arya’s expression darkened, and she looked over her shoulder. She must have been doing that a lot over the past few days. Jon again felt the sting of wishing he could better protect her. “They’re afraid. They’re convinced it’s some trap. Everyone’s saying they think Cersei’s a great queen and they don’t want any part of whatever this is. The ones who’ve left are the ones who were really struggling anyway, so they’ve got nothing to lose. There are rumors, you know. About what that Hand of hers does in the Black Cells. So you either end up on the walls or you end up down there. I can’t say I blame them for not taking the risk of trusting us.”

“It won’t be much longer,” Jon said. “At some point, we have to accept that we’ve done all we can.”

“Maybe,” Arya agreed. She looked unsettled, restless. He could see her shadow waiting further down the end of the tunnel. Gendry. He was dressed like a Goldcloak, but Jon knew it was him. Only Gendry watched Arya in that same careful way, like at every moment he was expecting her to tear off on her own, and he wanted to be prepared to follow. “I still think I should kill the queen.” She was looking at Jon hopefully.

“No, Arya,” he said.

“Everyone keeps saying that. First it was because we needed Jaime Lannister. Then it was because we were afraid of the wildfire. _Then_ it was because…”

“The wildfire is real, Arya. It’s dangerous. If Cersei realizes what we’re doing…”

“I _know_ that,” Arya snapped, as if he had suggested something very stupid. “I’ve _seen_ it. I’ve talked to her precious pyromancers. I’ve…” She hesitated, and Jon could see that she was sizing him up. He sighed.

“Arya.”

“I’ve _killed_ a few of them,” she continued, defiant. Her chin rose. “Because they’re happy to turn the whole city into dust if she orders it, and any of them I can remove is one more person who can’t make that shit. She’s already got more than enough for the whole Red Keep, and they’re making more every day. It’s creeping outward. There were already some barrels in Flea Bottom, and Gendry found a bunch stockpiled at the dragonpit. She wants to put it through the entire city, Jon.”

“I know,” he said.

“We can’t let her kill everyone.”

“I _know._ But if we send you in, and you’re caught…”

“I won’t get caught.”

“You can’t know that, Arya.”

“Yes I can. I can get in and out. It won’t be hard. I just have to kill one woman.”

“She’s guarded heavily. She’s never alone.”

“Not never. She has handmaidens. Every highborn lady does. It would be easy.”

“And would you have to take one of their faces to do it?” Jon asked. Arya’s face hardened.

“They’re serving her.”

“They likely don’t have a _choice_!”

Arya’s face hardened further, and he thought that she was going to argue. But then she looked back over her shoulder again, and he could see that haunted look on her face.

“You’re right,” she said. Quietly. “I could do it without killing anyone but her. Do you really think the queen even knows what they look like? I’ve got a few faces that could work.”

“You’re helping people. You’re making a difference. It doesn’t have to be _killing_ her.” 

Arya sighed, and she paced some more.

“I could end the war right now,” she said. “I could.”

“We don’t know that,” he answered. She sighed again, and she clutched her little Valyrian steel dagger in her hand.

“Fine,” she said. Curt and irritated by him. “We’ll keep doing this, then.”

She left him with a final look back over her shoulder. He watched her go, watched her disappearing back into the shadows once again. Knowing she was disappointed with him.

* * *

When he finally made his way back to camp, it was late, the sun long since gone. Nightfall always made their gathered army and their many campfires look more impressive than it truly was; they had enough people, he was sure. But Cersei was behind city walls, and the dragon queen’s army had been hit hard by the fight against the dead. They had been working steadily through their food and supplies, and what little they had left likely wouldn’t last much longer. They couldn’t afford a long siege, not without more support from Dorne or further afield. Daenerys had been persuaded to hold back on the dragons while they felt out the city, but Jon worried. He liked his aunt. She was strong, and she was clever, and she had come to help them against the dead when she had no real reason to believe them. But she was also guided by people who weren’t as cautious as Jon would like. Robb was a tempering influence, but that was all he was. Daenerys had the dragons, and she had the loyalty of the Unsullied and the Dothraki. Their numbers weren’t what they used to be, but they were still significant. Men like Tyrion and Varys were used to thinking themselves cleverer than everyone else, and Jon knew that their tolerance for the caution wouldn’t last.

The haze of relief after the Night King was dead had lasted for days. And even after the haze of it was gone, there was still _something_ that kept pulsing within him, reminding him that he had survived and that the thing he had worried about for years was finally over. But this…he hadn’t expected to be drawn so tightly about this. They had joined Daenerys, and Cersei was a monstrous queen, and it should have been an easy choice. It _was_ an easy choice. But it was so different to _choose_ war, and he was worried. For his family, for his friends. For the future. If Daenerys lost patience and took those dragons over the city…

Tyrion had advised that Daenerys keep her dragons close by for now, though she flew up on them at least once or twice a day and wheeled overhead, well out of range of the city. A tactic to frighten them, Tyrion said. To try and persuade the reluctant people of Kings Landing to follow Gendry and Arya and the others. Jon thought it more likely that Tyrion was trying to frighten Cersei into giving up. Jaime didn’t seem to think that was a possibility, but Tyrion wasn’t ready to accept that yet. It was odd, the dynamic between Tyrion and his sister. He talked at length about how he hated her and about how she had hated him, and yet he continued to give her so many chances.

The dragons were a good tactic, Jon thought, though that was mostly because _he_ would have been frightened of them if he was one of the people still trapped within Kings Landing. Daenerys had tried to persuade him to ride one of them, and he’d drawn the line at that, though Rhaegal seemed fond of him. Whenever he and his aunt went to see the dragons together, Drogon would hold himself aloof. Rhaegal was almost playful. Always nudging at Jon with his nose and nearly knocking him over. It made Daenerys smile and made Robb laugh until tears came to his eyes to watch Jon trying to fend off the dragon like it was an overactive pup.

In truth, Jon was terrified of the dragons. They were nice enough when their mother was with them, but they were too _much_. They were like wildfire itself; no battlefield was an equal one as long as they were present. For now, yes, Daenerys was on their side. But how easy would it have been to find himself on the field against her? He could imagine it too clearly. Maybe that was the problem.

After the fight against the dead, he dreamed of fire a lot. He’d worried, at first. Worried that it was something in his blood again, some Targaryen madness calling to him. He’d mostly accepted his feelings for Sansa as something unrelated to his heritage, but _everyone_ knew that Targaryens went mad.

It was Brienne who told him—gently, the way she always did—that he was being an idiot.

“We’ve all been dreaming of fire,” she told him, reminding him of all the shouts in the night. All the soldiers thrashing awake and then letting out great, shuddering breaths when they realized that they weren’t fighting the dead anymore. There had been constant smoke, constant fire, swirling around in the snow and the wind. Great jets of fire from the dragons. The spark and flame from the red woman’s burnings of the bodies that fell and could not be allowed to rise again. Of course he was still dreaming of it, even weeks out. He’d probably be dreaming about it for the rest of his life.

In his fear of fire, in his nervousness about the dragons, he felt disconnected from the Targaryens. Daenerys had floated the idea of naming him, but he hadn’t wanted it. He’d persuaded her that it would be better for everyone if no one knew he was legitimate. He should be Stark, instead, if he was going to be anything. He knew his aunt was disappointed, and he supposed he could not blame her. She had thought herself alone, and then she was revealed to have a family still left to her. She probably had hoped that this would be the beginning of a new Targaryen dynasty, but Jon had no interest in being a part of that. People did terrible things to each other when their house legacy was the most important thing.

“Robb spoke of you often,” Daenerys said, during one of their talks while they stood by the dragons and tried to find some common ground. “From what I heard, you’re much like Rhaegar was.”

“I don’t know if I’d ever run away with another woman while I was married,” Jon had pointed out, and Daenerys had lapsed into an awkward silence.

Sansa and Brienne had both laughed at him afterward, when he was nervous that he’d angered his aunt.

“Jon, you _idiot_ ,” Sansa had said, but she kissed him on the cheek and laughed to make sure he would not feel any sting with her words. “You really can’t help but antagonize her, can you?”

That was true enough, though it wasn’t on purpose. Daenerys just seemed to expect to be spoken to in a certain way, and that way wasn’t Jon's. He felt like Sam, the way Sam always used to trip over himself talking to girls. Like there was just something in his brain that refused to let him speak to her normally. He was afraid of angering her and afraid of showing too much affection for her and giving her more ideas about making him a full Targaryen. He tried to be funny with her, but she never seemed to understand or like his jokes.

“It’s fascinating,” Robb explained once to Jaime, who had not witnessed it for himself. “It’s painful to watch. His awkwardness used to be kind of charming. I don’t know what happened.”

Jon wasn’t sure what had happened, either. But Daenerys seemed to like him well enough despite that, even if he _was_ a disappointing family member and not at all what a Targaryen should be, probably. She had informed him politely that she could not have children, and that it would fall to him, as the last of them, to keep the line alive. It might not have been the most glowing endorsement, but it was acceptance enough. She was plainly hoping that he would change his mind and name himself as Targaryen to keep the name going as well, but he couldn’t imagine himself ever doing that. He’d liked the stories of Targaryen princes well enough growing up, but he felt no draw to make himself one of them. And no matter how many times Arya or Robb harped on him about it, he didn’t want a bloody dragon, either.

One creature from the stories was more than enough for him. Ghost was waiting for him at his tent, dead asleep in the middle of Jon’s cot. He jumped up when Jon entered, greeting him with a happy whine and a quick nuzzle before darting off, probably to find Sansa or Robb. The further they got from Winterfell, the more anxious Ghost had gotten. He was always checking on Jon’s siblings. Jon had been trying very hard not to read into that.

When he turned to start taking off his armor, he nearly swore aloud. Robb was sitting in the chair beside his armor stand, waiting for him. It wasn’t that he and Robb weren’t speaking. They spoke every day, but it was always in the company of other people, and there was a very polite wall that existed between them, because this was not the sort of conversation that you could have with any witnesses. It was a conversation between brothers just as much as it was a conversation between cousins and between friends. Jon sighed, and he removed his armor, waiting. Robb’s posture straightened, and he looked more like the Young Wolf than ever. Jon willed himself not to be nervous about it. This was still Robb. Whatever else there was, this was still _Robb_. Robb loved him. Robb loved _both_ of them. That was why he was doing this. 

“You wish to marry Sansa,” Robb finally said. Jon sighed.

“Yes,” he admitted.

“Sansa? You’re _sure_?” Robb’s expression was drawn, confused, and above all it was wary, but he was trying to make a joke anyway. It was very Robb of him. It made Jon smile despite himself.

“Aye,” he said. “I’m sure.

“She’s already spoken to me about it,” Robb said.

“Yes, she said she would before we left Winterfell. I’ve been expecting this for a while.”

“Well, it’s not the easiest thing to come out and talk about.” Robb was defensive, but beginning to smile a bit, and Jon nodded.

“No,” he admitted. “I imagine it’s not.”

“You’ve got to strike the right tone, first of all, and I’m not very good at that anymore.”

“You do all right.”

“You’re white as Ghost right now. Something tells me I’m not.”

Jon laughed at that, and he moved to sit on the bed, facing Robb.

“I would never hurt Sansa,” he said seriously. “And I know you trust me not to do that. If anything, I just hate how awkward this conversation has to be.”

“You have to admit it’s…a lot.”

“I know,” Jon agreed. He sounded quieter, weaker than he would have liked. He remembered those long weeks of feeling like something had to be broken and shameful within him, because why else would he love his sister so? Time had done away with most of that, but it was still _there_ sometimes, bubbling up and reminding him. Bringing heat and horror across his face. Faded now, dulled by time and by the fact that Sansa returned his affections. But _there_ nonetheless. Bran and Arya’s support had done away with huge bits of it, the shame falling away and replaced by relief. But Robb…Robb’s support would mean everything.

“She was quite determined for me to not make a big deal about it, but…it’s Sansa. I have to be sure.”

Robb’s own guilt was steadier than Jon’s. Jon’s came in crashing waves, reminders and reminders and still more reminders of what he had done and felt and said. But Robb’s seemed more like a constant weight on his chest. He carried it everywhere, always, and his lighter moments were the exception. Jon could see them easily, when he looked. Robb laughing with his siblings or smiling at his wife or sparring with Brienne. The guilt would lift off him and allow him to breathe easily. But it was more often than not settled firmly over him. A cloak he could not take off.

Robb felt guilt for so many things, but the one that confronted him the most was Sansa. He worried about her and was gentle with her and courtly to her because he had failed her when she was younger, and he knew that she could not quite entirely forgive it. She _said_ she did, and Jon knew that she was trying to mean it fully, but those hurts had been so firmly beaten into her by her memories, and he knew it wasn’t so easy a thing to leave in the past. She and Robb had grown close since he had been returned to them, and that made Robb feel even _more_ guilty; the closer they got, the harder it was for him to forgive himself for the fact that he had not managed to save her when he had the chance.

“I love her,” Jon forced himself to say. “I know it doesn’t make sense. I know how it sounds. If I wasn’t her cousin, I never would have…I would have kept it inside me until I died.”

Robb nodded.

“I know,” he said. “My conversation with Sansa was…” He sighed. He shook his head. “Of course I don’t _understand_ it, but…that doesn’t mean I can’t support it. Sometimes I forget how we used to be. Sometimes I look at you and I still see my brother, and sometimes I see Jon Snow, commander of the Nights Watch. And sometimes I just see _you._ We aren’t the same people, and I don’t want us to pretend we are just for the sake of making each other comfortable. No matter who you are, no matter who your father was, you know you will always be my brother, don’t you?”

“Of course,” Jon said. “And you will always be mine.”

“I know you and Sansa don’t need my permission _or_ my blessing. But if you were waiting for it, or if you felt you needed it, I want you to know that you have it. Daenerys thinks it would be a good political match, and I have to agree. You’re a Targaryen, much as I know you hate it. In terms of the politics, Sansa couldn’t hope for a better match, and neither could Daenerys. Our houses will already be tied no matter who you marry, but it’s not a bad idea to have another one. But it’s your happiness that’s most important to me.”

Jon had not realized how much tension he had been carrying within him until Robb spoke those words. He felt it all flood out of him at once. He nodded, desperately glad to hear it.

“Thank you,” he said, which made Robb roll his eyes.

“Don’t _thank_ me, gods,” he said, standing up from his chair in the corner and walking closer. There was a mischief in his eyes that did away with some of the uneasy distance that had been between them. Brought Jon back to when they were boys, fighting in the yard. “Looks like you’re finally going to be Lord of Winterfell after all.”

Jon laughed, loudly. He couldn’t help it.

“You always told me there wasn’t a chance,” he remembered.

“Guess I should have factored in the ‘unless you’re a secret Targaryen and end up marrying my sister while I go on to marry your aunt and become king of Westeros’ bit,” Robb deadpanned, and Jon laughed again, and this time Robb laughed with him. Uncomplicated. The guilt lifting off him for a little while longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Growing Up by Igor Longhi


	82. Tyrion III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tyrion and Daenerys ride Drogon to look at Kings Landing, and Tyrion tries to figure out what Cersei is planning.

His legs were still shaking from the adrenaline of riding on the back of the dragon, but Tyrion managed to contain himself as they stood on the ridge and looked out at Kings Landing. He appreciated how small the city looked from up here. Small and distant and insignificant. It was a nice change of pace.

When last he left Kings Landing behind, he swore that he would never return. He’d hated them, the fawning acolytes and the ungrateful commoners both. He had fought for them. Worked for them. Came up with very clever solutions to solve all their problems, and yet they had hated him. Seeing the city spread out so far below him was a relief. A single city. Daenerys could conquer the whole world. She could surely take a single city. Things were easier to see from this perspective, from above. The gates and the walls and the keep. Stones and dirt. People. Goldcloaks, and whatever remained of the Lannister forces. The Golden Company, if they hadn’t yet abandoned the city. The dubious defense of Euron Greyjoy’s ships, visible in the bay. Yes, it was only a city, and they were only buildings, and they were only people. All of it could fall, and it _would_ , as long as he continued to push Daenerys in the right direction. 

His eyes lingered on the keep. He remembered the last time he was in there. Shae gasping and choking. His father sneering from the privy. He should have paid his sister a visit as well. Instead, he left, and Cersei was down there now. The sister he had hated. The sister who had hated him. She was down there, and he didn’t know anymore what she would do. She used to be so predictable, Cersei. Even in her chaos, even in her unraveled, desperate grasping for any power that Tywin would allow her, Tyrion had known her. He had understood her. In some ways, they were the same. But she had clung to her position while he had fallen out. He crawled his way back to Westeros, clawing his way into power and standing with his chosen queen against the dead. Cersei had stayed in Kings Landing, a queen on her own in a way that Tyrion would never be king, bleeding power and influence with every day that passed. He wasn’t envious. He remembered how much the people had hated him when he was merely _Hand_ , and not even officially. He could not imagine that they would tolerate Cersei much longer.

Varys was doing what he could, spreading whispers through the city, using spies and servants to win over nobles and smallfolk alike who then worked to spread doubts and seed fear and courage wherever they needed seeding. Varys was a master at what he did, but he was a master of subtlety, and that wasn’t what was required now. Daenerys could not afford to wait for an internal rebellion, as tempting a prospect as that was. They could not endure a long siege, waiting for enough people to rise up and stand against the crown. They needed decisive, final action. The smallfolk who had been evacuated by Arya Stark all told the same stories of dissenters being hung from the battlements and the Goldcloaks paying the smallfolk in food to turn on each other. Every spy would be met with distrust, even the best ones. He had no problem allowing the Starks to continue to think that they were doing anything important by evacuating the few people they could out of the city, but he could not put his hopes in that direction.

It would have helped if he understood more about what Cersei was thinking, but he had not spoken to her. He wished that he had been the one allowed to see her instead of Jaime, though he knew that Jaime needed it for himself, and Tyrion could not begrudge him that. Still, Jaime had never been the most astute observer, especially when Cersei was involved; he hadn’t seemed particularly shaken when he returned from his meeting. He had been more interested in joking about the assassination mission and then finding a dark corner in which to gaze adoringly at his giantess. If Tyrion had been there, he may have noticed something that Jaime didn’t care to.

Then again, Jaime had had more exposure to Cersei as of late. Of _course_ the signs of her unraveling wouldn’t perturb him the way they would have perturbed Tyrion. Jaime had become used to them. He had seen it before anyone else.

“Just… _anything_ you can tell me,” Tyrion had said, the morning after Jaime’s return to camp. Jaime had looked harassed and put-upon, like it was unfair of Tyrion to ask.

“She’s the same as I expected,” he had said. “Angry. Convinced that I still want her.”

“It must have been a tempting offer. Even slightly.” Then it was hurt on Jaime’s face, and Tyrion felt sorry for his snappish tone. “That was unkind. You know how we Lannisters get when we have a lot of stress on our shoulders.”

“I wasn’t tempted,” Jaime said simply, and Tyrion had…well. Not _believed_ him, really, but he had felt something. Some relief. He was sure that Jaime _had_ been tempted. Jaime had never let go of their sister before, and as much as the rabble liked to claim that a person could change, that wasn’t always true. It was _rarely_ true, in Tyrion’s experience. His sister had always been a nightmare, and she was a nightmare still. His father had died as he lived. Shae had likely been _born_ a duplicitous whore, and Bronn a loyalty-less scumbag. People were as they were, and Jaime’s nature was, to its very core, sweetly rotten with love for Cersei. It was Jaime’s curse to _understand_ that it was a rot within him. To know that he had been poisoned and yet to go back again and again to drink from the same well. Imbibing his poison willingly, even as he claimed that it wasn’t what he wanted.

And it was Tyrion’s nature to be fooled enough by Jaime’s words that he did not notice Jaime’s actions until too late.

He had ordered several of the Unsullied to keep an eye on Jaime, just in case. He didn’t necessarily think that Jaime _would_ be mad enough to try and assassinate Daenerys, especially not for the dubious honor of marrying a monarch who would very soon be dead. But it was Jaime, and Jaime didn’t always listen to reason. As many times as he had to, Tyrion would try and save him, even if it was from himself.

Could Cersei’s entire plan really hinge on Jaime? He couldn’t believe that she would be so mad. She must have something else. Even if she truly thought that Jaime was so devoted to her, she had to know that the odds of his success were next to nothing. Even at his best, Tyrion doubted that Jaime could have fought the dragon queen’s Unsullied guards and made his way out of the camp and back to Cersei. Then again, maybe that was the point. Maybe Cersei didn’t care if Jaime made it back at all, as long as he did the deed.

But no. No, she had to at least understand that Jaime _might_ fail. One-handed and past his peak. Surely Cersei would see that, even if she was too mad to see everything else. Her plan could not hinge on Jaime, and it could not hinge on wildfire, no matter what Jaime and Arya Stark claimed. The pryomancers had been odd, pretentious, unsettling men, but they had been clear enough when they told Tyrion what he could expect in terms of cost and time. He’d sped them up significantly, but even _then_ …

No. Cersei had had time to prepare, and he had no doubt that she’d had them working on production, but it would not be nearly as much as Jaime feared. And those rumors about a horn that could control dragons…well. Surely they were just _that_. It would be madness to think that something as simple as a horn bellow could do anything to the creatures that were so loyal to Daenerys. There had to be something else. Something he was missing. Tyrion hated to feel like he was in the dark, especially now, so close to the end. Sometimes the battle for Kings Landing felt like a battle that they had already won, because it seemed like it would be so _simple_.

And then there were times like this, when all he could think about was how easy it would be to fail. Daenerys had put her faith in him, and he could not afford to lose it.

“I don’t like it,” he said aloud as he stared at the city in the distance. He could almost hear Daenerys rolling her eyes. She returned to his side, leaving Drogon’s. She had been stroking the dragon’s nose and speaking lowly to him, and Tyrion had been annoyed by her lack of concern for the sight in front of them, but he felt guilty for that annoyance now. He often forgot how young she was. She was young, and she had been through so much, especially for someone of her age. He should have more patience with her.

“What is it you don’t like, my Hand?” she asked, indulgent and mockingly condescending. He felt slightly less sorry, at that; she could hold her own.

“My brother is convinced that my sister hides wildfire everywhere.”

“Arya has said the same.”

“Yes, but I wonder how much of that is a ruse and how much of that is the truth. Cersei knows that I’m aware of the wildfire. If I was her, I would count on me knowing about it. I would use it as a distraction. I hear her Hand is fond of experiments. I’m sure he could have replicated the look of wildfire easily enough. What Arya Stark has seen might not be the whole truth.”

“Then your advice runs counter to everyone else’s?”

“No,” he admitted. “I don’t think I would say it so confidently as that.”

“A refreshing show of humility from you,” Daenerys quipped with a small smile in his direction. Of all of them, only _she_ seemed fully at peace with what they were about to do. He supposed it made sense. She did not know anyone in Kings Landing. She did not know the city. She barely knew Westeros. She had made a home for herself on Dragonstone, and then again in Winterfell, and she had fought against the dead and helped to save her father’s people from the army of the Night King. Whatever happened with Kings Landing…perhaps the people of the city would not thank her, but she had given them time, and the ones who survived would feel smug enough about escaping when they could that perhaps they would forgive her for the rest. Tyrion couldn’t think that far into the future yet, which was an odd sensation. Usually he was full of plans. Thinking ten steps ahead because everyone else only ever made it to eight and he had to be better than them _somehow_. But now it was like there was something blocking him from seeing through to the rest.

_“Are you sure you’re prepared to face what comes after?”_

Bran Stark had asked him that. Not long before the beginning of the war against the dead. Tyrion enjoyed talking to the boy, though Bran wasn’t a boy any longer in a few different ways. He was nothing at all like the child he had been, and so Tyrion had been certain that he was the key. No one seemed to know how to speak to him, but that was because they were trying to find the child he used to be. Tyrion didn’t waste time on that. He treated him like the wealth of knowledge that he was, and he had scribbled notes for hours while Bran spoke, certain that he would find some answer. There were musings on past Targaryen kings and queens, and musings on the reign of Robert and his illegitimate children. There were endless discussions about the nature of power. In the end, he hadn’t had anything of use against the Night King. When Tyrion had complained, Bran had only smiled, and then he had said it.

No, Tyrion had not been prepared. He had not been prepared the first time he was named Hand, and it had nearly killed him. He still wasn’t prepared now. He had relied for so long on his own intelligence and his instincts, and those things had done well enough in getting him this far, but he knew that it would be the height of arrogance to assume that they would carry him through everything. Bran’s words had jarred him. Humbled him, almost.

He had studied those notes every night since, taking them out of his bag and reading them, though by now he knew the contents by heart. Bran had given him advice in the cover of bland stories about Targaryens and how they had wielded their power in the past. He said again and again that the only thing that mattered was the Night King, and yet he had given Tyrion so much more than that. Let the bigger men handle the Night King. Let his big brother Jaime ride out and face that particular foe. Tyrion would make sure the afterward was sweeter than the previous years had been.

He still didn’t feel particularly prepared, but it helped, knowing that there must have been a reason for Bran to tell him what he had. It made him feel like there was a direction to head in, or at least a helpful roadmap of things to avoid.

But his sister…

Well. He had to lead them successfully past his sister, first, and it was proving to be a lot more worrisome than he had predicted. He at once understood that it would be folly to underestimate Cersei and also thought that the others were _over_ estimating her. He understood, of course, why Sansa and Arya Stark were so convinced of her superiority; they had been children when they had lived under Cersei’s rule. Of course they remembered her as more powerful than she truly had been. Of course they were frightened of her. Tyrion had been frightened of her as a child, too, and still those scars lingered. Cersei was so wild and unpredictable that it felt impossible to box her in even when she followed the same old patterns. She was wildfire itself. You always expected it to do the exact thing it did, and somehow it managed to surprise you anyway.

“I have never known Cersei to be unprepared for anything,” he mused. “Or if she _is_ unprepared…I’ve never known her to stay that way. She’s a dangerous, unpredictable woman. If I have to give her a compliment, it would be that she knows how to think on her feet, and she’s never down for long. Even if it seems like she should be vanquished, she slips her way out of whatever holds her. She was arrested by the Faith and ended that particular ordeal by blowing up the sept of Baelor. I think she overrates her own cleverness, but she has a _kind_ of cleverness about her. She’s wily, if nothing else. She always has an exit strategy. Those are all things that will help her now, against you. If there is any way to stand against a massive army and two dragons, Cersei will have found a way to do it. Even if it’s by accident.”

“Even the most unpredictable person can find themselves boxed into a corner,” Daenerys pointed out. Tyrion shrugged in half-admittance, half-argument. Yes, that was true. Everyone ran out of luck eventually. But there had been no unusual movement from within the city since they got close enough to send scouts. Business was continuing as usual. People walked the streets, frightened but alive. Goldcloaks and mercenaries prowled the walls. Whatever force remained to Cersei, it stayed hidden. If she was truly desperate, he would have expected a fury of work and panic. Instead, there was nothing. That was why he didn’t like it, he realized suddenly. It was too quiet. _She_ was too quiet. When Cersei was backed into a corner, she raved and ranted and plotted and eventually, somehow, got her way, even if it was in less perfect circumstances than she had wished. If they truly had her trapped, they would hear her from here.

“My sister is a beautiful woman,” he mused. “And that has always been her power. She manipulates events to her liking by promising herself as the prize. We know Euron Greyjoy wants her. I wonder who else she might have turned towards her.” As long as it wasn’t Jaime, Tyrion didn’t particularly care, but it was always important to consider.

“Beauty isn’t always power, you know. It can be a curse.”

“Yes, I’m sure it’s very difficult being so beautiful,” Tyrion said with a kind of good-natured sarcasm, thinking of his brother again.

“You say that as if you aren’t considered a handsome man, but you are.”

“To whores, yes. I’m very handsome. They like the look of my pockets.”

“You’re also very bad at receiving compliments. Did you know that?”

“Yes, I did.” He smiled at her. She wasn’t smiling back. She had that hard expression on her face that she got when she was thinking of her past. The less pleasant aspects that he still knew too little of.

“Beauty makes people think that they can take things from you. It makes them prize you for that above all else. Beauty, especially beauty in a woman, is seen as a thing a man wants to possess.” She smiled at his expression. “Don’t look so shocked. I was sold into marriage with a man who only needed to look at me before deciding to wed me. That is not power. I have been talked down to and derided and have had to fight against every man I’ve faced to force them to take me seriously, because they look at me and see a woman they would like to claim and possess, not an equal. _That_ is not power. I have seen young girls sold as bed slaves because of the rosy color of their cheeks, and I have seen old women discarded as worse than trash because they no longer hold any appeal to the men who used them. That is not power.”

It was funny that she could speak so passionately about that, with the look on her face that she wore. She was so like Cersei in that moment. Cersei had said similar things, once. And then she stopped saying them.

“My sister _bent_ her beauty into power,” he said. “She was an adept player of the game when she was younger. When she was a girl, she liked to run and tumble and play with Jaime, or so I’m told. When my mother died, that was at an end. She was expected to be a lady, and so a lady she became. She learned that she was not to have physical power, that she was to be constrained in tight little dresses with her hair and face painted. She was to smile at men and please the ones she was meant to please, and no others. I am sure she would have agreed with you when she was younger. But she would have very little sympathy for any woman who could not do what she did as she aged.”

“I think I would have agreed with that once,” Daenerys admitted. “But I was young then.”

“And now you are so old, of course.”

“Sometimes I feel it. But I only meant that as a girl, I assumed I succeeded because I was special. Everything I did. Everything I touched. Viserys was special. He was meant to rule. Why would I not be the same once Viserys was dead? I learned to pretend to know little, because I knew that men liked it when I didn’t. I learned to hide my true thoughts and feelings and pretend that I needed my advisors to show me the right way to do everything.” She smiled a little at Tyrion, and he felt a thrill of _something_ he could not name. An unbalanced awareness that perhaps he had been underestimating _her,_ too. “I had pity for those who didn’t have my power, but I didn’t particularly care for them. I thought that if they wanted power, they simply should have reached out and taken it, the way I did.”

“And we’re back on being beautiful again, I think,” Tyrion pointed out with a smile. “Because surely you will admit that your beauty helped you win allies.”

“My beauty, perhaps. My name. My dragons, most of all. Without my dragons, I would not have come nearly so far.”

“That’s true. Beauty and fear. Quite a set of powers to have.”

“And we’re back to dismissing the rest of me, I see,” Daenerys pointed out. Tyrion allowed a small smile.

“Well. I can understand that, even if I can’t quite see it the way you do,” he said. “I’ve spent too many years bitter over my brother’s beauty and the fact that he never chose to do anything with it but chase after my sister’s cunt. A waste of a face like that. Cersei knew exactly how to twist him under her spell.”

“You think it was only her beauty that did that?” Daenerys wondered.

“No,” he admitted. “No, it wasn’t only beauty. There was some cleverness in it. Or there must have been, anyway. She had him so firmly under her spell that he joined the Kingsguard for her. It took nearly dying for him to wrest himself away, and even now I’m unsure how far away he really is.”

“I think you give Ser Brienne too little credit.”

“No, Brienne does deserve some thanks. That’s true. But Jaime has to choose to stop following Cersei. Brienne…Brienne may be the strongest woman in the world, but I don’t know if she would have been strong enough to pull Jaime away if Jaime truly did not want to go himself. He deserves as much credit for finally seeing through our sister as Brienne deserves credit for her patience, I think.” Assuming he _had_ seen through Cersei at last, anyway.

“You’re right. And all without the kind of beauty that typically turns mens’ heads. She’s quite powerful, Brienne.”

“I think the rest of you are lucky she _isn’t_ beautiful. She’d rule us all if she were.”

Daenerys laughed a little, and she looked down at the city again.

“Cersei’s beauty can’t help her against dragons,” she said. “So it’s the cleverness that’s important. What kind of cleverness? What form will it take? Or do you truly not know?”

It pained him deeply to say the words, but he had to; they were true.

“I truly don’t know,” he said. “She is a mystery to me, I think.”

“Another show of humility, and so soon after the first one. Are you feeling well?”

Tyrion smiled grimly in the face of his queen’s gentle teasing. She was right, of course; that only made it worse. He had been confident. He saw now that that confidence had been folly. All the past few years, he had clung to the certainty that he knew what he was doing better than anyone else. Bran had disabused him of that notion fairly effectively, remarking blandly upon all the mistakes Tyrion had made and how things could have been different if he had handled them better. Joffrey. Cersei. Tywin. _Shae_.

So many mistakes. So much blood on his hands. Not the blood of his family, not the obvious things. But the blood of innocents. He still didn’t care very much for them, did he? He tried to. He tried to take them into account. But it was easier not to. Easier to stay on the course that would end with him in a position of the most power. He was fairly good at looking out for himself. Other people…that was where it got murky.

“I’m not feeling well, I don’t think,” he admitted. “This whole thing has me feeling sick. Uncertain. I don’t like it. It’s much better to be the clever, joking one who always gets things right even though everyone expects him to get it wrong. Perhaps that’s why Cersei always delights in knocking the feet out from under everyone who expects too little from her. There must be some kind of pleasure in it.”

“There is,” Daenerys confirmed.

“I always said I wouldn’t be fool enough to do it. Perhaps I already have been. Perhaps I have led all of us into a trap.”

“You haven’t led us anywhere. _I_ have. You have advised me, but you haven’t led me. You do not have to wear my defeat around your shoulders any more than you will wear my victory.”

“Don’t I?” Tyrion wondered. He understood what she was saying. But still. “I can’t allow us to get caught up in her games. I must be cleverer than her. Think of the hit my reputation would take otherwise.”

The jape was a poor one, and weakly delivered, and Daenerys’s small chuckle in response was the same.

“Well, try, then. You keep saying you don’t know. What do your instincts tell you? Those have gotten you this far, haven’t they?”

Perhaps she was right. He liked to attribute his successes to clever planning, but instinct had something to do with it, surely. He spoke, looking at the Red Keep as if to see into his sister’s mind.

“She’s exceedingly easy to outwit when you know what you’re up against, but I don’t, here. I have no idea what she might be planning. Her Golden Company are all guarding the keep. She’s left the lower levels of the city largely undefended, aside from the gates. What does that mean? It could be anything. She never cared much for the poor, unwashed masses of her city. Or it could be strategic. Make us think she has abandoned Flea Bottom and the rest, only to find a trap cleverly sprung. Arya and the others have claimed that the Wildfire is mostly around the keep, but perhaps that’s a ploy. A feint to make us think it’s safe to take the outer city, only to incinerate us all in the blast. I don’t know how she would mean to keep the keep safe from the flames in that case, but perhaps she has it all worked out and _I’m_ the fool. Or perhaps she isn’t even in the city at all! We’ve seen no movement from the keep, and Varys says his spies have told him that she’s still in there, but she wouldn’t be the first queen in history to use a clever decoy, and I wouldn’t put it past her to use one now. If I keep claiming ignorance, it’s only because I truly am: I don’t know what she’s up to.”

“We’re running out of time for you to figure it out. With every day that passes, we use more food. We use more resources. You’re going to send your former wife into an early grave. She and Missandei have been hounding me for more food from Dorne, but Ellaria has yet to return with the latest shipment, and there is little else. My kingdom is starving.”

“I know, your grace,” Tyrion sighed.

“We don’t have _time_ to play these games of hypotheticals and possibilities.”

“We _need_ to if we want to survive. Better a starving kingdom than a burning one.”

Daenerys sighed and looked again at the city.

“I don’t like to think of the risk either,” she said. “But I don’t know what else to do.”

“There’s nothing else _to_ do. Cersei has trapped us in inaction for the time being. That doesn’t mean she’s won. This is why sieges are such bloody awful work.”

“I don’t want this to turn into a siege,” Daenerys says. “In a siege, it’s the poor who suffer first, and the queen who suffers last. I don’t want that.”

“No. Nor do I,” Tyrion admitted. It was a point he had not truly considered. “We should go back. They will be worrying.”

He was so occupied in the question of how to break his sister’s hold on Kings Landing that he hardly paid attention to the flight back to camp. Riding on the back of a dragon had once been his fondest dream, and of course Cersei managed to sour that, like she had soured everything else.

Grey Worm was waiting for them when they dismounted. He looked visibly concerned, which could have meant anything from mild unease to full-blown terror.

“There is an army,” he said.

“The Lannisters?” Daenerys asked. Grey Worm shook his head.

“Iron Bank sent them,” he said. “The man said ‘Cersei Lannister has not paid’.”

Tyrion laughed. Loudly. He could not help it. Daenerys and Grey Worm both looked at him. Now they were _both_ concerned. Tyrion suddenly felt very light. This didn’t solve all of their problems, of course, but it was delightful enough to feel as if it almost did.

“Oh, sweet sister,” he said with a sigh. “Let’s go talk to this army, then. See what they’re made of.” To Daenerys, he said, “you see? This is what happens when a Lannister fails to pay their debts.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the songs for this chapter are Wir Sind Gleich by Tony Anderson and The Way Home, both by Tony Anderson


	83. Daenerys X

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daenerys plans

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters today! Just like with the long night, I wanted to post the next three chapters together, since they tell the whole story of the Battle of Kings Landing, so those will come tomorrow, I think. 
> 
> Not, like, to get anyone's hopes up or anything! The Long Night should definitely be considered the climax of this particular story, I think!

The Iron Bank had funded and put together a mercenary army that could rival the Golden Company, according to the representative the organization sent to speak with Daenerys and her advisors. They were not fighting her cause, he told her, with a broad smile that Daenerys did not trust, but they would join their army to hers to show the world what happened when debts were not paid. Tyrion and Varys had for once been in full agreement: angering the Iron Bank was folly, even for an army as large as hers. Working with them would give her the replenished forces that she had been looking for, and it would be a better diplomatic choice.

“They aren’t above more underhanded means of getting what they’re owed,” Varys warned with an apologetic expression, as if he wasn’t just as famous for that. “You don’t want to stand against them if they are offering to stand _with_ you.”

“I would also be careful about taking out any loans,” Tyrion added, and Varys had hummed in agreement. Tyrion’s mood, at least, had improved drastically since the Iron Bank army arrived. He thought the whole thing unspeakably hilarious.

Loans, Daenerys did not need. She had gold enough. It was food she needed, and it was an end to this war that she wanted. This seemed a perfect way to ensure her victory. Robb knew little about the Iron Bank, Davos had nothing _good_ to report, and the rest of the Starks were as wary as they always were. Only Jaime Lannister openly urged caution, but he admitted that his distrust was more about the fact that Cersei had so quickly gotten into dire straits with them.

“She had a habit of ignoring any problem she did not know how to immediately solve,” he acknowledged with a frown. “But I wonder if she ever would have been able to solve this one. Be wary. That is my only advice.”

All of it together added up to a very cautious positive, and Daenerys was inclined to accept their help anyway. Her army still was vast, but it was not what it used to be, and she was tired of throwing her own men into the fires. She had lost so many. The Dothraki who had worshipped her and the Unsullied who had loved her, and all of her people, from all the lands she had been to, who followed her or feared her or simply chose to trail in her wake out of a lack of better options. After everything they had been through together, her people were more important to her than ever, and she hated to gamble with their lives against whatever forces Cersei had left to her. This Iron Bank army was willing, and well-rested, and well-paid. They could take the front lines if that was what they wanted. They could even take whatever gold remained to Cersei Lannister when it was done.

She was firm, and polite, and made certain not to agree to anything more. The representative from the Iron Bank seemed not to have expected anything else. He did not even seem to believe that there would be much gold to have. It was vengeance, then. Reputation: nobody stood against the Iron Bank and lived to tell the tale. Daenerys supposed she could even respect that. Tyrion was giddy with the knowledge that their sister would fall for her foolishness in not doing the thing that Lannisters always prided themselves on doing, but Jaime was more subdued. He did not argue, and he did not seem overly distressed to hear that his sister’s own mistakes would be what condemned her, but he nodded quietly and excused himself from the war table.

Tyrion and Brienne were plainly concerned; they looked to Daenerys several times as if worried that she would judge Jaime harshly, but she didn’t. She had been party to her own brother’s execution, but she understood why not everyone would follow in her example. She hadn’t loved her brother very much at all, at the end. She thought she had, but enough time had passed since then that she found it difficult to remember anything but fear and pain. It was only the fact that he was the only person she _had_ that had fooled her into thinking it was love at all. She could empathize with Jaime for that reason, but she also knew that their situations were not the same. When she was younger, she had a habit of assuming that things were simple. _She_ had had no trouble participating in her brother’s death, and so why should Jaime not have the same reaction to his cruel sister’s coming death? It would make him weak if he could not. But she wasn’t that girl any longer. Everyone was different. Everyone reacted differently. She had seen too much and met too many people to be ignorant to that now.

She allowed Jaime to leave and reflect on his own, out by the campfires. She would no longer need his advice; the time for speculation and long conversations about their coming actions was over.

If Cersei would not be intimidated by the sight of the dragons, perhaps the Iron Bank’s army would convince her to surrender. If not…it would take a while longer, and it would involve a lot of risk, but there were ways to avoid a siege while making some progress.

Surrender was still the best option for all of them. It was only Cersei’s pride that stood between them and an easy transfer of power, and Daenerys knew not to underestimate the strength of it. When there was nothing else left to her, Dany’s pride and her faith in herself had kept her going. She had no doubt that Cersei would cling to it just as Daenerys had held to her own.

Tyrion directed men in packing wagons full of rocks and hay, covering everything with cloth to make their food stores look more impressive. They would take everything within sight of the city, far enough out of range of any weapons Cersei might have on her walls, but close enough that Cersei would think they were prepared for a long siege. Ravens were sent out to Yara and Theon Greyjoy to tell them to make the final approach on their ships. Sansa wrote more letters to her relatives to let them know that the battle would be over soon, and that they should send the aid that had been agreed upon, so that it would be available when the time came. Maesters to treat battlefield wounds and food and medical supplies for the wounded.

For Daenerys, the remainder of that day was spent in going over their maps and their forces and their supplies with Sansa and Robb and Jon and her advisors. Varys was in contact with Arya somehow, and was able to get word to she and Gendry and The Hound, telling them to step up their efforts to empty the city, and that their time was growing short. Jon worried that Arya would use the opportunity to head for the keep and Cersei Lannister, spurred on by The Hound’s thirst for vengeance against his brother, but there was nothing that could be done now. They would have to trust her. Sansa seemed sure that Arya would not waver from the plan. Daenerys couldn’t quite say _where_ she fell on the issue. There were times when Arya reminded her of herself, and she knew that _she_ could be impulsive when left to her own devices. Arya had been more used to isolation than Dany ever was, and she was used to making choices in that vacuum. Without her family nearby to caution her, it was impossible to say what she might do.

Daenerys did what she could to calm and counsel her nephew, but she wasn’t sure how successful she was. There was not nearly as much time to spend on it as she would have wished. It seemed that at once there were both too many and too few things for her to do. Her attention was divided. Missandei tried to help keep her calm, but that only made her more unsettled. She should be among them, her people, her armies, helping them prepare for the battle ahead. She walked the camp, but that didn’t help. Her people bowed to her and said her name in reverent whispers, and all she could think of was how many of them had died for her against the dead.

For her, but for everyone, too. The battle against the dead was different. It was universal, a threat that they all needed to face for the good of everyone. For what was this battle being fought? Her throne?

The lives of the people in Kings Landing, yes. The lives of everyone Cersei Lannister would kill in senseless wars and increasing madness, yes. But it wasn’t always about that, and it was difficult for Daenerys to take a step back completely from the version of herself who once only thought of her own destiny.

She wasn’t that woman anymore. She was sure of it. There were reasons to defeat this threat that had nothing to do with her own claim to Westeros. She was not afraid that she was turning into Cersei Lannister, grasping at power for fear of not having any. But there were things she told herself and then there were things that she felt, and sometimes she wondered how much of her confidence was self-deception. Was she right to worry? Was she right to question her motives? _I am not my father. I am not my father_. Endlessly, over and over. Remembering it. Believing it. _Forcing_ herself to believe it.

The planning went on.

The dragons would attack the gates, first. Everyone agreed on that point. The Golden Company might try to meet them outside, and Dany would hang back on Drogon, watching the walls for any signs of the weapon Varys said could take down one of her dragons. The Golden Company were mercenaries, as much as their reputation gave them a shine of bravery. If the dragons did not frighten them off, the size of her army would. She was sure of it. But if they did not stand aside, the gates would be burned, along with all who stood upon them.

The Westerosi didn’t seem to like fire very much. Even Robb, who loved her, paled at the idea of it, though he did not argue. There was something about it that bothered them. Robb described it as dehumanizing, the way fire burned a body until none could recognize it. And those who survived fire always eyed it askance, like The Hound. The pain of it was supposed to be great. Daenerys wondered if she would feel differently if she knew. They were her house’s words. _Fire and Blood_. They weren’t nice words. They were words to be feared. And yet many of her ancestors had been beloved rulers in their time.

Had it been fear that kept the people in line then? Had it been fear more than love? Daenerys was the first Targaryen in generations to have strong, full-grown dragons, and she saw the way that men feared her and bowed to her. It was fear much more than it was love, she thought. She hadn’t had time to show them love. _Conquering_ , Tyrion once said. _Is not for the faint of heart. You must show you’re your strength before you can show them your compassion_.

And yet Tyrion was not the only person with advice. She tried to imagine what Jorah would have wanted. He would have wanted her to rule Westeros, but the _how_ would have been important. He would have followed her regardless of what she did, but he had always been more concerned with Daenerys the woman than Daenerys the Khaleesi, and she had no doubt that that would have continued to be true of Daenerys the queen. It was _her_ that he had loved, not her titles or her dragons. He was one of the few, and if she caused too much destruction, if she hurt too many, if she justified her actions by claiming the importance of her throne, he would look at her in that way he sometimes used to, with his brow furrowed and his lips pursed. He would not tell her that she was choosing wrong, but she would know his true thoughts, and she would know that he was right.

She would not let herself forget that.

Once the gates were down, the army would enter the city. The Iron Bank representative insisted that his mercenaries go first, and Daenerys had negotiated him down to half of his force, with the rest following behind the Dothraki and the Unsullied. Grey Worm and the other military commanders had been passing her words around, ordering their soldiers not to harm anyone who didn’t have a weapon in their hands. No rapes. No killing of children. No looting. They were not sacking the city to destroy it. They were trying to _save_ it.

Tyrion didn’t seem hopeful that it would work, and Daenerys knew he was probably right. _Men are men, and men are monsters_ , he’d said once, and she knew that there would be some who would chafe under her orders. They’d learned what kind of Khaleesi she was, and they would learn what kind of queen. Anyone who raped would be punished. Everyone who killed an innocent would be punished. But it would be too late to save the ones they had hurt, and Daenerys feared what seeing their victims’ faces would do to her. She needed to be strong, but she _wanted_ to be a compassionate queen. She had to face them.

When the armies marched, Daenerys would hang back with the non-combatants.

She hated that part. Her dragons were her strength. It would be so much easier if she could use them.

But everyone was right, of course. She _couldn’t_. Cersei had seen to that. If Daenerys used her dragons, it would be a disaster. They could not risk activating the trap of the wildfire. Tyrion was still convinced it was a feint of some kind, and maybe he was right, but it was a risk that they couldn’t take. So instead of flying into battle the way she should, she had to have faith in her commanders.

She _did_ have faith in them. The army was well-trained, and thanks to the Iron Bank’s mercenary company, they had enough soldiers to take the city as carefully as they would need to. There were siege machines outside the city, but they would be held in reserve as the soldiers took the entrances to the Kings Landing. The army would move slowly, taking on any of the defenders who tried to stand against them while smaller groups of Unsullied would enter through the sewers and tunnels that Arya had mapped out for them. Those Unsullied groups would carry in the sand that had been received in shipments from Dorne. Sand, Tyrion claimed, should be able to contain the wildfire and keep it safe while it was removed from the city in the wheeled carts that her people had been building. It would take a concerted effort and an amount of time that made Daenerys uncomfortable to contemplate, but it would hopefully be done quietly enough that Cersei would not know what they were doing until it was already done. Arya apparently knew where most of the caches were, and she had gathered her own little army of followers from among the Flea Bottom beggars who would lead the Unsullied to them. The army would not move ahead to the inner part of the city until the outer part was neutralized, and then they would move forward.

“How is this better than a siege?” she had asked Tyrion, frustrated by the idea of spending such a long time standing outside the city and waiting for the slow march of her army to make a difference.

“We will be freeing people as we go. Rescuing them. Removing my sister’s power bit by bit. In a siege, we would all grow weaker. This way, we show the people that we are strong, and that they can rise against her. There are many trapped inside that castle with her that don’t love her nearly as much as she thinks they do. One of them will make the move.”

Daenerys was not so certain of that, but she couldn’t argue that wildfire would be the worst outcome. Still, it felt like a mistake, to spend so much time. A mistake until she thought about the people that a slow sack would save, anyway.

She was pacing in the war tent long after the others had all left. Tyrion and Varys came back for something, and they seemed surprised to see her.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Your grace, you need your rest,” Tyrion said. He had dark circles under his eyes, so she wanted to laugh at him for the hypocrisy, but she didn’t.

“I can’t,” she said simply. She had sent Robb off to their tent long ago with a promise that she would be with him soon. She hoped he had fallen asleep waiting for her. He would need the rest better than she; he would be leading the northerners into the city while she stayed outside and _watched_.

“Your grace,” Tyrion said gently.

“How many people will die tomorrow?” she asked. “How many people will die for my crown?”

“We’ve discussed this,” Tyrion said patiently, and she whirled on him.

“I am not a child,” she said. “Remember that. I know I seem it to you, but…”

“No, forgive me, your grace,” Tyrion said quickly. “I didn’t mean…Of course you aren’t a child. I only…this is _war_ , Daenerys. People will die. They will die because you have given them a cause to fight for.”

“For my armies, perhaps. What of the people in Kings Landing?”

“Arya Stark has been making progress,” Varys said. “Jon Snow went to find them and bring them back.”

“But there are plenty who did not listen. And tomorrow, they will be trapped in the city.”

“They are terrified,” Tyrion reminded her. “Of my sister. That’s why they didn’t run. They are no safer under her rule.”

Daenerys shook her head and looked down at the map. Every house. Every street. Every alleyway. She imagined it. All those people. If she wasn’t careful, they would burn. And some of them would meet the sword, and some of them would be taken in the streets by her own armies, because she could not control every one of her soldiers.

“There will always be collateral damage,” Varys said gently, but it wasn’t what she wanted to hear. Never mind that she knew it was the truth. She found that she could not listen to it.

“I want them to be safe under mine,” she said. “I don’t want to think of them as collateral damage. They are people.”

“They are,” Tyrion said slowly. “And they are a mad, sweaty, roiling lot. They are a future mob. They are future dissidents. They are a future problem as much as they are people. People are all the same. They all want what will help them most.”

“They are starving,” Daenerys pointed out. “And frightened.”

Tyrion understood at last.

“Beggars,” he said.

“I was like them once.”

“No, you weren’t,” Varys said. “You were always a princess.”

And that was true, in its way. But it hadn’t _felt_ true. What good was the title of princess when it was all she had? When she was hungry and Viserys was angry, what use was a kingdom across the sea?

“ _Special_ ,” she said. “Viserys told me we were special. Like he thought that fact would keep us warm when we were cold. Perhaps it did, for a time. But it doesn’t have the same effect now. My ancestors thought they were special. My father thought he was special, and look at what he nearly did. I cannot be the same as them. I have to _care_ about the people who will be mine.”

“They won’t _be_ yours,” Tyrion said. “The people belong to whichever king or queen or lord or lady gives them food and shelter for their children. That’s all they care about. They don’t care for the great battles. They don’t care for the wars. Only when those tales become legends and they can listen to them hundreds of years later do they care about the heroes and the villains. Right now they just want to live. That’s it.”

“And they won’t, if I bring harm to them,” Daenerys pointed out.

“It’s _war_ ,” Tyrion said again, as if that was all there was.

* * *

She found Robb still awake inside their tent. He was wearing soft-looking sleeping clothes, and it made her want to kiss him, so she did.

“What’s wrong?” he asked her, almost immediately, and she laughed, because of _course_ he did. She pulled back from his embrace to marvel at him for a few moments. He was so beautiful. He was so kind. He was her husband, and she was so afraid. They had survived one impossible war, and this one seemed like it should be safer, and yet she had not had such an easy life that she could trust these moments. It would be so fitting if one of them died tomorrow.

“I don’t wish to be queen of the ashes,” she said. Robb grimaced, and he pulled her closer. She rested her head against his chest. She had been holding it so high all day. In front of Tyrion. In front of the representative from the Iron Bank. In front of everyone. She was the queen. She had to _look_ like a queen. But here, she could rest against him. He could bear her weight. It was the only place.

“I know,” he said. “I know it’s difficult.”

And he did, of course. He must have seen the horrors of what happened to the smallfolk when a war ran unchecked. He had seen his bannermen and his mother and wife slaughtered in front of him. He knew what it was to be collateral damage in a war he didn’t want to fight. He was such a comfort. More than just a physical one. He was a comfort on every level, and he loved her.

“Tyrion and Varys and everyone don’t understand why I am suddenly so afraid of it. Perhaps they’re right. Maybe I _am_ naive.”

“No,” he said. “I understand.”

She sighed, and he wrapped his arms around her tighter. He moved them back to the bed, and she lay beside him gratefully. His arm moved gently up and down her back, just the way she liked.

“My king,” she said. “You will be my king. Is that what you want?”

She looked up at him, and he frowned down at her. His arm was still moving against her, and she felt herself lulled by it.

“I don’t know that I want to be king,” he admitted. “I don’t know that I ever have. But I want to be yours. I want to be your husband. I want to help you however I can. I want to help heal the wounds that my armies and the Lannister armies have made in this kingdom. If I need to be king to do it, then I’ll be king gladly.”

Daenerys smiled up at him. Of anyone, he was the only one who always seemed to say exactly what she needed to hear.

_I need to be queen to make the changes I want to make. And to be queen, I need to win._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the songs for this chapter are Wiser by Old Man Canyon and Give me an Answer by Low Roar


	84. Jaime XI

He could sense Brienne before he turned and saw her. No one else of her size hesitated so much, as if they were unsure of the amount of space they were allowed to take. Those other people strode into rooms, bursting with energy, fully aware and appreciative of the fact that they were the biggest person in it. There were times when that confidence was in Brienne, too. He had seen it. Their courtship sometimes seemed to strip her of it, leaving her vulnerable and uncertain, and he hated to know that he had been the cause of it.

 _I want you exactly as you are_. He had told her that often enough since their first kiss outside Winterfell’s walls, on that damned ridge. He’d showed her in whatever way he could, short of taking her hand and planting it firmly on his cock so she could feel the evidence with her own fingers, so much easier to believe than just his panted-out words and the way he sought her out always. He understood on one level that it was a constant struggle for her, and that a struggle like that didn’t end just because one person showed her some measure of affection. And since he had proposed marriage to her, and since she had accepted, he could sense some freedom in her. An awareness of his feelings. Perhaps an awareness of her own. A battle had been won, but he could see sometimes that the war would be a longer fight.

He himself still had to struggle to contain his surprise every time one of the Starks or Daenerys sought his opinion on something important. Sought his military expertise or his head for strategy. He was unused to being rated very highly for his intelligence by anyone—his father had long despaired of him ever showing more than passable acuity, and his siblings both thought him an impulsive, instinct-driven dullard compared to themselves. He was no stranger to an insecurity taking root deep inside, and he was no stranger to fighting against it once he realized that that insecurity was mere folly.

Whenever Brienne looked at him with respect after the baths at Harrenhal. Whenever she called him _Ser Jaime_. Whenever she smiled at him. Every time it was like a bolt to the heart because she was the only person who ever saw beyond _Kingslayer_ , in those days. She was the first person who thought him worthy of anything more than his name, and it had taken until Highgarden for him to really allow that feeing to sink into him. To allow himself to think: _I_ am _worthy._ And even that, even _now_ , even after killing the Night King and becoming the kind of storied hero he’d always feared he wouldn’t be, it wasn’t always easy to hold on to.

Of _course_ he understood. He understood her passion and want one moment and her wilting awareness of her own size the next. He understood why she could laugh and smile with him openly one evening, and then in the light of day cringe away from his gaze. He understood that he had gotten to her too late, had loved her too late, to avoid the casual cruelties of lesser men seeping into her and leaving lasting damage. He had not been there to protect her from the way a defensive sword could point inward as well as out. His love now was a proof to her, he knew, that those lesser men had been idiots, but sometimes she worried. He could endure that. As long as she no longer doubted his heart, he could endure anything.

He turned and took her in. She was usually more confident by firelight, like she imagined that he could perhaps not see her imperfections, as if he was not always aware of every part of her. But now she was lingering on the outskirts of the fire’s glow like she thought she would not be welcome.

He only had to arch an eyebrow for her to understand that she was mistaken. She approached, though it was still cautious, and there was an odd, considering expression on her face. She sat beside him, not quite close enough to touch, but he could feel the heat of her. Warmer than the fire. He had missed her. Missed her especially when he was away, but missed her even now that he was back and looking at her again. He missed those days at Winterfell when he had deluded himself into thinking that she believed in his affections because she kissed him back with a hunger that couldn’t be faked.

No, the hunger couldn’t be, but the trust had been. It seemed plainer now that he had been away and back again. The wariness. He understood why it was in her, and he understood that it was likely exactly what he deserved. All his sins finally catching up with him and tormenting him by placing him so close to something he wanted, tainted by his own past choices.

Tyrion didn’t understand it. There were likely many things about it that Tyrion didn’t understand. Not the way Jaime looked at Brienne nor the way he twisted himself up in knots because of her. But he truly didn’t understand why Jaime despaired of her ever believing him.

“She told you she’d marry you, didn’t she?” he had asked when Jaime tried to talk about it. He acted as if that settled everything.

It didn’t seem so simple to Jaime. But he was in a black mood, after listening to the discussions of just how his sister would die. It had been rocky enough after seeing how far Cersei had fallen. How desperate and how delusional she seemed, sitting on that throne, the picture of confidence even though he could see the fear behind her eyes. _Just show me_ , he wanted to say. _Just let me see that there is any part of you left. I’ll help you. I’ll try_. But she had remained closed off, and that frightened girl he remembered and wanted and loved for all his life stayed locked away where he couldn’t reach her. She’d been locked away for so long. Jaime knew in that moment that she had forgotten how to open the door behind which that frightened girl hid.

He had returned to Cersei’s side because he wanted to help her. He was trying to be a better man. A more honorable man. And both the Jaime he had been when he loved his sister and the Jaime he had become away from her would not be able to live with himself if he didn’t at least _try_ to save her. He had known that it would hurt Brienne that he was walking away, but it wasn’t about Brienne. It was about what he could live with. It was about building a future when he returned. Yes, he was glad to prove to her that he could leave and then return to her side without falling under Cersei’s thrall, but he was gladder to show himself that it wasn’t only love that drove him to want to protect someone. It was duty. Honor. Things he’d failed to embody all his life, but he had been willing to sacrifice to uphold them now.

Cersei had just…not been willing to let him.

It was Bran who told him the starkest difference between he and his twin, but it wasn’t until he had stood before her and had spoken to her again that he understood. He had regretted. Wanted to atone. Cersei did not.

People called her mad, Cersei, but Jaime didn’t think that was it. Fear turned animals into hissing, spitting things, and Cersei had been afraid all her life. She’d had _reason_ to fear for most of it. It made his heart ache to know that he could have helped her more, to know that he could have protected her, if only he had been better at it. He could not regret leaving her at last, and he could not regret all that had happened since, but he wished he had intervened earlier, when it would have made any difference at all.

He knew what Brienne likely thought, when he rode back to Kings Landing. He knew that she had been hurt by his decision, though she had tried to hide it. He couldn’t regret that, either, though he wished she hadn’t felt the pain of it. He would never be worthy of her if he didn’t follow the impulses that told him to try to save his sister. He would never be worthy of anyone if he turned his back on Cersei and didn’t try to atone for all the ways in which he had failed her.

When he rode back into the camp and saw Brienne again, it had been impossible to tell what she was thinking. She had walled herself away, or maybe it was just the surprise that was difficult to take. Difficult not to read into. Afterwards, she’d told him that she would marry him, but it had sounded like a dim hope. Like she was humoring him. She kissed him. She told him that she loved him. She held herself apart, as if he were some creature out of an old story, some tempting thing that she had to resist to save herself. Not that it wasn’t flattering, but he had grown frustrated. He was only a man. Not even a particularly good one. There was a part of him that loathed the way she acted as if he was something else. Something to be raised up and worshipped.

In this quiet moment by the fire, Jaime wondered if she ever _would_ understand. She was too innocent. She understood nothing of what went on inside his mind, and she understood nothing of how he looked at her and felt safe. He wondered how long her walls would stand against him. Could he fuck her twice a day for the next moon and still leave her thinking herself a convenient body and a friend that happened to be near enough? Could he tell her that he loved her every day for the next year and still leave her assuming that he only meant he loved her _enough_ to play at pretend with her?

He could give her children. He could marry her. He could hold her every night for the rest of his life. He could tell their children bedtime stories of the brave Maid of Tarth and how she had rescued the Kingslayer from himself. Would she believe it then? Or would she go to her grave thinking that he was only with her because he could no longer be with his sister?

He had turned Cersei down. He hadn’t even needed to fight himself on it. That had been a startling, freeing moment. A moment in which the last of the chains that bound him to his sister had seemed to fall away completely, leaving him utterly untethered for the first time.

He had followed Cersei into life. That didn’t mean that he had to follow her out of it.

And even if he thought it was possible to somehow succeed at all that Cersei wanted…he didn’t _want_ to marry her. It had once been _all_ he wanted, and yet she offered it freely and he felt _nothing_. He wanted to marry Brienne. He wanted to go with her to Evenfall, and he wanted to stand with her before the septon and say those bloody words he had always dreaded being forced to say. He wanted to turn his back on these fucking wars and these fucking monarchs. He’d go back to bloody Winterfell if she wanted. He’d freeze his balls off in the north and warm her bed and guard Sansa for the rest of his natural life if that was what she chose. He’d learn how to balance accounts if she needed a steward. He’d take Casterly if she wanted a castle larger than her own. He didn’t care about the specifics of what happened to him afterward. For the first time there seemed to be a choice, and he knew exactly what he would choose.

Jaime had followed Cersei all his life, and perhaps Tyrion was right when he said that it was time for Jaime to make his own choices, but this _was_ Jaime’s choice. Brienne had never led him wrong before. Cersei had never led him right.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He didn’t know what she was sorry for. It didn’t quite matter. He was sorry, too. In a sorry mood, and he didn’t want to take it out on her. He shrugged one shoulder and looked at her. She was watching him carefully, her eyes moving over him. He sighed, and she met his gaze. She seemed startled to find it on her. She looked sympathetic. Pitying. He nearly laughed.

“Ah,” he said. “I’m becoming more adept at reading your mood, my lady. You’re sorry because you think I’m having second thoughts? About _you,_ or about helping an army take down my sweet sister?”

Brienne refused to answer. Stubborn woman that she was, that was hardly a surprise. He laughed anyway, though he hardly felt like it. It came out too bitter, and he was sorry for it when she looked concerned. He shook his head again.

“I know it isn’t easy for you,” she said. She seemed to resent being made to say the words.

“Which part? That you constantly assure me of my own honor but do me the disfavor of believing my every word to be false?”

“I don’t,” she argued, annoyed.

“I love you,” he said. He said it like a challenge, and she failed to meet it. She looked away again.

“I know it isn’t easy to realize that there’s nothing you can do to help someone you love,” she said, as if he hadn’t spoken.

“You are so pigheaded. You really are. If you weren’t so innocent I’d think you were doing this on purpose. Make me squirm. It’s what highborn ladies are taught to do, you know. Cersei was always quite good at it.”

But that was mean, and he knew it the moment he said it. Brienne looked at him with narrowed eyes.

“I’m sure she was,” she said.

“Or is that what you want?” he wondered. “Would you like me to list all the ways you’re like her? Or would it make you happier if I listed all the ways you aren’t? You seem so convinced that I am made only for my sister. The two of you are in agreement on that.”

“You are not made for her,” she said. “But you told me that you were. It’s what you believed.”

“Yes, I did. Years ago, now. I know _some_ people are lucky enough to be born nearly perfect in their thinking, but the rest of us have to struggle around and lose our fucking limbs to figure out what they want. I’m sorry for ever making you think that I was her other half. It was what I’d been told all my life, and I thought it was true, but it isn’t. I am not the same man I was. It’s difficult to close your eyes once they’ve been opened. Like trying to fall back asleep once you’ve been startled awake to find the sun already up. Sometimes you try, though. _I_ tried, when I came back from Riverrun and found that I could no longer see my sister the way I used to. I tried because it was all I knew how to do, and because I thought that whatever had been awoken in me could of course only be temporary. But it wasn’t. Highgarden wasn’t the first thing that changed me, but I haven’t been the same since. And seeing Cersei again…I’ve never felt more free of her. Is that a lie, do you think?”

“No,” Brienne said, hesitant. He understood.

“You think it’s a lie I’m telling myself,” he said. “Is Arya back yet? I could have her stand in front of us and ask me as many humiliating questions as you’d like. Maybe one of them would get it through that thick skull.”

“It isn’t easy for me,” she said, ignoring his jape about Arya, which he somehow knew she would do.

“I know it isn’t. It isn’t easy for me, either. You claim to love me, but you don’t trust me.”

“I trust you,” she said. Now her brow furrowed in concern. “It isn’t about that. And I do believe you.” This seemed more difficult, and he straightened, opened his mouth to stop her from speaking if she didn’t want to. An odd time to become protective after goading her into saying anything at all. “I believe you do love me,” she said. There was a strength behind her words, and Jaime felt a rush of relief to realize that he believed _her_. She wouldn’t have said it aloud if she didn’t believe it to be true. Brienne’s defenses were nearly impenetrable, and they would have made her keep herself close and hidden if she still thought him false.

“Then _what_?” he asked. He sounded nearly desperate. He hated himself for it. “What is it that has you looking…?”

“You left the tent,” she said. “You seemed upset.”

He shook his head. There were times when he forgot that he was older than her. That he had lived more in those years than she had lived for her first sixteen or perhaps twenty. He felt _weary_ with it. There was a gentleness to her that he sometimes hated because he knew a man like him would only ruin it. Accidentally or not, he was too indelicate for her softest parts. He wanted to laugh at her. Call her naïve. He didn’t.

“A moment of weakness,” he said, swallowing back his annoyance.

“ _Jaime_ , it isn’t weakness,” she sighed.

“I suppose you think it’s grief.”

“Well.”

“You believe I love you?”

“Yes. I’ve given you enough opportunity to leave.” A bit of humor in her tone, but still concern, most of all, and he shook his head. He felt very apart from everything else. Not quite the act of sliding away from everything, becoming separate from his own body, but something similar. The quiet crackling of fire and the nearness of Brienne and the absence of any other presence near enough to matter, it all added to something very soft, very liminal. He was able to speak his mind.

“You have,” he said. “And I have not taken any of them. You say you believe me, and yet I fear you don’t. Maybe you think you do, but…I don’t know. I fear sometimes I am those men you told me about. The ones who laughed at you and teased you. I’m them, and I’m every man who has ever made you feel like you’re not enough.”

“You’re not.” Arguing with him, defiant, and it made him smile even though she was wrong.

“It feels like I might be,” he admitted quietly. “I know it isn’t what you intend, but…I understand it, in any case. None of it has ever made any real sense. You loving me despite my tarnished honor. Me loving Cersei despite her cruelty. Me loving you despite your stubbornness and avoidance. Neither of us has ever chosen the healthiest path for ourselves.”

“It was you who told me that it wasn’t a choice, loving someone.”

“No, but it’s a choice to tell them. It’s a choice to believe them, and follow them.”

“I don’t know if believing is a choice.”

“Maybe. It felt like a choice every time I believed Cersei even though I should have been more doubtful. But maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it will help you if I tell you what it was I was thinking when I left the tent. It wasn’t regret. It wasn’t grief. I was thinking that it’s monstrously unfair that only one of us is to be punished for our sins. I’ve been granted place of honor. Forgiveness from the family I injured most. A woman I love, even if I fear there’s a part of her that will always doubt me.” He met her eyes and saw that she was looking back at him, unflinching. He had wanted her to flinch from that. He really _was_ in a poor mood. “Cersei and I should both be paying for our sins. Not just her. We have both done such hateful things.”

“You’ve asked for forgiveness. You’ve worked towards it. Cersei hasn’t.”

“Yes. It appears to be that simple, doesn’t it?” Jaime asked. He sighed. He looked at the fire. He thought again of Bran Stark sitting under the heart tree in Winterfell’s godswood. He thought of his sword driving into the Night King’s back. “There were times when I knew that Cersei and I weren’t…when we were younger, we loved each other fully. I do believe that, even still. We were always _different_ , and she had a cruel streak that I hated, but we loved each other. We would laugh together. We would trade places and team up and play childhood games, and we were always happy. I don’t know when it changed. I know I held on to that feeling for far longer than she did. By the end…it’s been habit for so long. I should have realized it sooner, but I didn’t. I was blind.”

“You can’t blame yourself for that,” Brienne said, which made him laugh again.

“Of course I can,” he said. “And I do. You do too.”

She shook her head.

“No,” she said. She still didn’t reach for him.

“After Riverrun,” he said. “After the sept. I think I hated her. I think I hated her, but I had loved her for so long that I didn’t even realize what the hate _was_. I hated that she was rewarding the Freys with Riverrun. I hated that I stood against you. I hated that I was so proud of saving Kings Landing from Aerys and then she went and blew the sept to pieces anyway. I hated that I didn’t love her anymore. I went away inside and pretended I was somewhere else every time she touched me, and I still wasn’t strong enough to leave.”

“Jaime,” Brienne soothed, and finally she _did_ touch him. It wasn’t enough. She had to understand, but she didn’t, and he still felt _cold_ somehow. Detached. _She’s agreed to marry you_ , he told himself.

_Yes, but she doesn’t think you actually will._

“I should have left,” he said. “We should have had more time. Maybe you’d believe me then.”

She sighed. She shook her head. She was still touching his arm, and now her thumb was brushing over it. He could feel it through the thin layer of his shirt, and he focused on it. Felt it more than he felt anything else.

“I know you don’t understand.”

“I understand too well.”

“You know it isn’t that.”

“Isn’t what?”

“That I don’t trust you.”

She was firm about it, and he laughed.

“Why would I think that?” he asked blithely. “What reason would the honorable Brienne of Tarth have to not trust me, the honorless Kingslayer?”

“Jaime,” she said, warning again, but still so gentle. It made him want to be gentler too. It made his anger and his hurt want to fade away. “You know it isn’t that.”

“I don’t know _what_ it is,” he admitted. “I imagine it’s a number of things.”

“It isn’t easy,” she finally said. “To look the way I do. And to want the things I want. Some days I believe it fully. Some days I understand. Others, it’s…it isn’t easy. It’s difficult to trust my own…my own mind. I’m not used to the thing I want being so in reach. You knighted me. You gave me a priceless sword and a quest I could fulfill. You have already given me so much, and your love sometimes feels... It isn’t about you. It isn’t that I don’t trust _you._ It’s me. I keep thinking I’ll wake in the morning and find you gone. Disappeared. Back to your sister. Coming to your senses, or looking at me in the light and…realizing…” When he was about to interrupt her, she shook her head, and she held up her free hand to stop him. “I’ve heard it all my life. It isn’t as simple as stopping believing it, just because you…I’ve heard it from _you_ , even, remember? It’s difficult to forget.”

“Yes, but that’s the thing about loving someone. It changes the way they look.” Brienne gave him a doubtful look, and he smiled at her. “I mean it. It makes every feature into something…treasured. And do you know what I felt when I saw Cersei again? I didn’t see her beauty anymore. I couldn’t. It wasn’t there. Love makes a person beautiful, at least to me. Please don’t make me say something that ridiculous again.” He leaned in and pressed a kiss to her shoulder. It was all he could reach. She shivered under it, and he grinned wider. _I love you_ , he thought. _You stubborn woman._ “I notice you have no clever reply to that.”

“Give me some time,” she said, and Jaime laughed.

“You feared that I would go back to be with her. Or die with her, if she would not be moved. But I didn’t do either of those things. I’m not so great a fool anymore as to think that I have to die with Cersei. Maybe I was once, but that man died at Highgarden, the way he wanted to. Cersei made her choices, and I have made mine. I will endeavor to feel like I deserve the consequences. It’s difficult for me too, you know. As I am sure you can imagine.”

Brienne smiled slightly, just a quiet upturn of her lips, but it relieved him to see it.

“Yes,” she said. “You never think well of yourself.”

“I will mourn her when she dies.” He said it like a warning, because it was one. “I still love her in a way I can’t quite escape from. She was a part of me for so long. Losing her will be like losing my hand again. A loss I can recover from, but will always bear. But I am choosing you. Do you understand? I am choosing to stay with you. To live. With you. I know it might not be enough, but…it’s what I can promise you. Do you think you want that?”

“Yes,” she said.

“And you won’t be too hurt when I mourn for her? You won’t think that it means I love you any less?”

“No,” she agreed, more slowly. She shifted closer to him, and he leaned against her gratefully.

“I do love you,” he said.

“And I you.”

It was a relief and a thrill to hear it, still, though he had known for moons now.

“And I _do_ wish to marry you.” She met his gaze, then, and it wavered slightly. She bit her lip. “Do you believe that?”

She looked at him carefully. Checked him over, like she would find some evidence of a lie pinned to his shirt. It was silly enough, and yet it made him feel absurdly _proud_ when she said “yes”, and smiled at last.

“Then will you? Marry me? No conditions, no terms. No more pretending it’s anything else. An open betrothal, to tell everyone.”

She nodded more readily this time, and he laughed at her again. Something within him felt severed. Not in a bad way, or a dangerous way, but in a way that felt right.

“I’d like to kiss you,” he said. “Would you allow that?” 

Her smile was small, but he could see how it reached her eyes, and he could not help but look at her. He wasn’t lying. He understood that on the surface perhaps she _was_ ugly. Ugly according to the way that most people saw beauty. But she wasn’t ugly to him any longer. Her beautiful eyes. Her cropped hair. Her powerful body. The way she looked at him and _saw_ him and loved him better than anyone ever had. How could he _not_ love her? How could he not endeavor to prove himself to her? It still stung when he could see that she doubted him, and he imagined that there were frustrations still ahead. But he felt like he could handle them, now.

“I would allow it,” she murmured. He leaned in and pressed his lips to hers. It was still so soft and new, kissing Brienne. Nothing like kissing Cersei. He was grateful for that. He imagined kissing Brienne in a sept. Her father would be there, and Podrick, and perhaps Sansa, if she could make the journey. They would all be watching, and they would know for certain. Brienne would know for certain, too.

He felt a twinge of guilt for his sister, who would be dead. He wished that there was another way. He truly did. But he would not ruin his own happiness for the sake of her. He had loved her once, and he loved her still, but she would never be content to step down. She would fight until the end, and there was no way for her to win.

If she truly did love him, she would want him to live. She would want him to be happy. She would not want him to die beside her. He was embarrassed by how long it had taken him to realize that, but it was not something he could ignore now that he had. He had been granted a second chance, a life with a woman he loved, and a life where he was allowed and encouraged and expected to be the good man he had always wished to be. He would not throw that away for anything. Not even Cersei.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the songs for this chapter are 42 by Mumford and Sons and You (Piano and Strings Version) by Future of Forestry


	85. Arya VIII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The march on Kings Landing begins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This outcome of the Battle of Kings Landing was exactly what I had planned from the VERY beginning of this story, and yet now I'm nervous about it. So, uh, hopefully yall like it!?!?

After days of sneaking around in the city with Gendry, wearing the face of a dead Goldcloak, Arya was glad to be in an open field, facing the gates of Kings landing.

Not that those days in the city were bad, really. It was nice to feel like _Arry_ again. Not having to care about being muddy and dirty. Not having to worry about politics at all. Just saving people a little bit at a time. That was the kind of work that Arya liked best. And Gendry was good company. He liked the trick with the faces, though he had laughed at her when she tried to emulate the burly man whose face she had taken. It had been easier for him; he just had to take a dead one’s uniform.

She’d expected him to be weird about her new skills the way her brothers were, but Gendry mostly seemed jealous. She didn’t mind that. He _did_ hate it when she acted too _Arya_ in another person’s face. It was terrifying, he said, but he didn’t seem to hate it like Jon did, or even like Robb did, like how it changed the way they looked at her. And he didn’t hate it because he thought she was still too little to be the kind of person who took peoples’ faces and wore them. But then, Gendry never thought she was too little for anything, even when he made fun of her for her size. She had always been the one he trusted on the road when she was just a little boy running away, same as him.

She kind of liked his reaction, actually. He laughed when she wanted him to, and sometimes he seemed sad for her or worried about her, but even _that_ wasn’t as annoying as she feared it would be. It just felt nice, kind of, like when Sansa worried over the stories Arya told about her time away, or like when Jon hugged her out of nowhere, like he just couldn’t help himself, like he just had to hang onto her a bit to make sure he knew she was okay. A warm feeling, almost. Soft.

Gendry had been stubborn, at first, about not mentioning that kiss they’d shared before the Long Night started, or any of the kisses they had shared _during_ it. She noticed it when they were still at Riverrun. At first she thought he was just embarrassed, or that he only kissed her because he thought they were going to die, or maybe that she just wasn’t very good at kissing. All of those reasons were stupid and made her angry, but then he got even _stupider_ and told her that he shouldn’t go around kissing her because he was a bastard and she was a lady.

“If I wear some bastard girl’s face, would that make you feel better?” she’d asked, and he had laughed and recoiled and looked disgusted, which was exactly the reaction she wanted, and it made her like him even _more,_ even though she was annoyed about the whole kissing thing.

“Of course it wouldn’t,” he said, and she laughed at him.

“I forgot you could be so _ridiculous_ about some things,” she said.

“It’s easy for you to forget, but I don’t ever stop thinking about it. You don’t know what happens to boys like me when they’re caught with girls like you.”

Arya remembered Micah, and her throat clogged. That hadn’t even been anything. No kisses, no nothing but friendship and a bit of fighting, but she remembered the way Joffrey was so angry that Micah was fighting her. It didn’t matter that she said she _wanted_ to fight him. It didn’t matter about anything. It just mattered that he was the butcher’s boy. If Micah had been somebody else, would The Hound have killed him the way he did? Probably not.

“I wouldn’t let you get in trouble,” she said. “And besides, my brother’s the king now. He can do whatever he wants. Make you legitimate. Everyone _knows_ who you are, and everyone else from your father’s family is dead. You could have Storms End and be a proper lord.”

“What would I even _do_ with Storms End? I wouldn’t know what to do with a proper _house_ , I don’t think. A whole castle? Now you’re the one being daft.”

“I am not.” She had liked the thought of it, actually. Gendry in his nice castle surrounded by nice things. He’d hate it. It was hilarious. “You’re a Baratheon. And think about how angry it would make the queen if she knew.”

That got a smile out of him, and he’d tilted his head to one side, considering her.

“You want to kiss me that badly, do you?” he asked, and she had shoved him and stuck her dagger under his chin, which made him laugh and lean forward and kiss her anyway, which she quite liked.

Anyway, Robb and Daenerys both thought it was a good idea, and so Gendry was legitimized the night before they left to sneak into Kings Landing. He kept saying his name, over and over. Gendry Baratheon. _Gendry_ Baratheon. Gendry _Baratheon_. As they settled into the sewer to sleep. As they made their way through the city. As they shared whatever food they could find.

“Should have known if you got made a proper lord you’d never shut up about it,” Arya muttered around a heel of hard bread. Gendry laughed at her.

“I have a castle now,” he pointed out. “Not that I’ve ever seen it. _You_ don’t have a castle.”

“I should have known,” she said again, mournfully this time, shaking her head.

“If anyone should be bowing and scraping now…”

“If you think I’m _ever_ going to bow to you, you absolute idiot…”

He laughed and put his arm around her, and he kissed her in this way she liked, like he was just so amused with her that he _had_ to kiss her. She’d seen lots of it lately in camps. Men sneaking away with girls or with other men, people sneaking away into tents. They were all just happy to be alive, and that made them want to be together. Arya quite liked it. She’d suggested sneaking off to Gendry a time or two, but he’d been horrified about it and said more things about her being a proper lady, and even now he seemed determined to act like some kind of chaste knight from a story. Only kissing her and putting his arm around her.

“You realize,” she had said to him once. “I’m not a proper lady. Much as you keep saying it.”

“Believe me, I know that.”

“I’m not going to run off with you to Storms End and have babies. I don’t want that.”

“I don’t want that either.”

“Oh. But you _need_ babies.”

“There’s lots of babies around already.”

“That’s not how it works.”

“What d’you mean?”

“I mean you need _real_ babies. Your babies. Legitimate babies.”

“Says who?”

“I don’t know. The lords and stuff.”

“I was a bastard three weeks ago, but now _I’m_ one of the lords. I don’t care if there are never any babies. I don’t want you to wear a dress and sit around at Storms End making both of us miserable. I don’t even _want_ Storms End. I just want to be with you. Go with you on your adventures. Wherever you are. It’d be nice to have a castle to go home to now and then, I suppose. And the gold would be nice so we’d have actual supplies and not just shitty bread and bad meat to eat on the road. I…well. I’d like to marry you. I think I’d like that. Just in case, and because…I don’t know. I never thought I’d ever marry anyone, and I might like it. But if it isn’t what you want, then that’s okay too.”

She had liked that bit. It made her stomach squirm with wanting something she hadn’t ever realized she wanted before. She always thought Sansa was silly for swooning over all those old love songs and tragic stories, but she _liked_ it, the thought that his wants were so simple. Just _her_ , just as she was. No frills or lace or trappings like her mother and Septa Mordane always insisted she would need as she got older. Gendry didn’t look at her and see Arry anymore, and he didn’t look at her and see _milady_ , either, and he had never seen No One. He saw Arya Stark, and Arya Stark was who he wanted. 

She liked _him_. She thought she’d go all tense and annoyed when he said the bit about wanting to marry her, but actually she didn’t. She didn’t think it sounded so bad when he said it _that_ way. Marriage for ladies wasn’t always good. Sansa still didn’t talk about her second wedding, but she’d said enough, and Theon looked pale and grey and sometimes green whenever anyone mentioned it _or_ the man she’d married. Sansa did talk about her first marriage, usually joking, and Jaime Lannister pointed out once that it must be almost easy to talk about compared to her second, but he’d heard enough stories about it from his horrible family to know that she felt wretched on _that_ day, too. But Sansa was happy at the thought of marrying Jon, and Arya had wondered so many times how she could possibly do it again if it was always so terrible for her. Now she felt like she understood. When you were marrying the right person…

Well. Maybe Gendry wasn’t the person her parents would have ever chosen for her, but she didn’t care. They never would have seen him as anything other than a bastard, and they were wrong for that. She loved them and she missed them, but they were wrong, and she never would have been happy married to some lord or something. She could have gone her whole life without ever realizing that Gendry was out there somewhere: the right person, all along.

So, fine. She’d marry him. If all he really wanted was her, she was happy enough to give him that, and if he _did_ want babies or to go and marry some sweet wife who’d make a good Lady, then she’d let him go.

But…she trusted him. When he said that that wasn’t something he wanted. She trusted him, and she liked him, and that was good enough for her.

_He_ was good for her, too. Reminded her of how she used to think about things before she was No One. She’d suggested killing two Goldcloaks and stealing their uniforms and one of their faces, and she had been surprised at first when Gendry insisted that they could only kill Goldcloaks that they _knew_ were bad. Some of them, he was sure, were just scared and trying to stay alive, and he didn’t want to kill anyone like that.

And of _course_ Gendry would suggest that. It made her like him even more, and it made her happy that he wasn’t too afraid of her to argue with her when he thought she was wrong. He was just…Gendry. The same old Gendry. Just the way she liked him.

She agreed with him about the Goldcloaks, and so they snuck around the city and poked their heads into all the brothels until they found a few Goldcloaks mistreating some of the girls who worked there. Not that it took very long; there were always people mistreating girls in brothels, and a lot of the Goldcloaks were shit people. Arya lured them out by pretending to pickpocket them, and then she killed them in the alley outside, and she and Gendry pulled their bodies into the sewers and took what they needed. Even Gendry was okay with _that_.

They’d done what they could for the people of the city, and the people of Flea Bottom especially, but it wouldn’t be enough. There were still so many of them behind the walls of Kings Landing. Lots of children, and lots of women who were too afraid to trust two Goldcloaks, and who had even been afraid to trust Arya when she went back with her true face. Lots of people _did_ listen to her and take their chances, but Arya didn’t want to save _lots of people._ She wanted to save _everyone_.

Maybe some of them really did want Cersei as queen. People who were doing all right, surviving. It was easy not to care about who was in power when you weren’t the one suffering. But Arya knew that most of them had hated Cersei before, and she was sure that they wouldn’t have a better view of her after the past few years. They were just afraid. She couldn’t blame them. She would have been afraid of Cersei, too. She _had been_ , once.

Now, it was difficult to feel anything but a twinge of pity for the queen. Not that she felt sorry for her, but she remembered what it felt like to feel trapped and afraid. Cersei was a monster, and she had done terrible things, but Arya still _understood_. She could hate and understand at the same time.

Bran was always talking about how that was impossible, or how it was harder to hate and understand at once, but it wasn’t. Arya did it all the time. It was easy to understand people. People did things for all sorts of understandable reasons. But she could still hate them for choosing all the wrong responses to the bad things that happened to them.

She still wanted to go to Cersei. End the war by killing her. But her brothers didn’t want to let her, and even Daenerys told her it was a bad idea. She was going to do it anyway, but The Hound, of all people, was the one who stopped her.

“They’re going to die,” he said. They were in the sewers at the time. He had this look on his face like he was sick of hearing himself talk, though he’d barely said anything. He was angry, she thought. Maybe angry at himself for being so weak, but she didn’t think that was it. Angry because he knew he was right and angry because he wished he wasn’t. “It doesn’t need to be us.”

“You’ve been waiting your whole life to kill him.”

“Aye, and what good has it done me? And what good _will_ it do me if he just guts me and leaves me to bleed out? You’ll get the whole city blown to bits if you go after her.”

“If you’re going, I’m going,” Arya had insisted stubbornly, and The Hound had smiled at her. Fonder than she liked. She wanted to stomp on his toes or scream at him or shove him into the muck.

“I know,” he said simply. “That’s why I’m not going.”

_That_ had made her angry, mostly because she knew he was probably right, and partly because she didn’t want the stupid Hound to care about her so much that he’d give up on his revenge just to keep her from taking hers. _There’s still time to save yourself_ , he told her, though she told him that that was ridiculous and walked away and refused to keep talking to him after that, though he laughed at her and called her a _feral little bitch_ in that fond voice she hated.

Only Sansa never tried to tell her not to go after the queen, and Arya knew that was only because she wanted Arya to do whatever would make her happy. She was all about that now. Being supportive. But Arya could see the way Sansa’s eyes were tight at the corners whenever they talked about Arya taking her revenge, and she knew that even Sansa, who had more reason to hate Cersei than anybody, didn’t want Arya to do it.

It was just…it was something that she thought she had to do. Something that she wanted to do. For a long time, it was the _why_. Why she was surviving. Why she was learning. Why she was still training. She had to do something great. She _had_ to. And why not killing the queen who killed her father? Joffrey was already dead, but Cersei had been up there, too, when Ned Stark died. Cersei had hurt Sansa, and she had ordered Lady killed, and she had done so many terrible things.

But it wasn’t the _why_ anymore. There were so many other reasons why. Her family. Her friends. Gendry. There was so much to live for, and so much to keep fighting for, and she couldn’t throw everything away to cling to the dreams of vengeance she’d come up with as a little girl. She kept telling everyone, over and over, that she wasn’t that little girl anymore. She had to stop acting like it.

So. Fine. She wouldn’t kill the queen. The Hound had looked awful smug about it when she returned to the camp when Jon sent for her. Clearly he’d expected her to go in toward the Red Keep anyway. Jon had hugged her, and Robb had ruffled her hair and smiled at her, and Sansa had kissed her on the top of the head and pulled her close. 

She saw Jaime Lannister watching her, and she shook her head in his direction. He nodded back. He looked very pale by the firelight, and she knew he was afraid. At least if Arya had been the one to kill Cersei, he would know exactly how it would happen. Now he didn’t, and she knew he would worry. It was the same thing she did when she worried about Sansa, or about Robb, or about any of her family when she was apart from them. Except Jaime _knew_ his sister would die. He just didn’t know how much pain she would be in when she did.

* * *

She and The Hound and Gendry all stood together when the march on Kings Landing began. She was near Jon and Robb and Brienne, too, and it was good to know where they all were. Brienne was in a particularly good mood, though Arya wasn’t sure if that was just because she’d convinced Jaime Lannister to stay behind and guard Sansa or if it was something else. She was smiling at Robb and Jon as they argued about something stupid, and she kept glancing at Arya and smiling at her, too, and it didn’t feel so much like they were marching to war. Maybe it was just that it was so much sunnier than it had been when they fought the war against the dead. Sunnier and warmer and probably easier, all things considered. It felt already like _after_ had begun, and Arya wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She hadn’t had much of a chance to think about _after_ yet. Everyone else was making plans and figuring out how they were going to rebuild Westeros after all of the horrible things that had happened to it during the wars. What was Arya going to do? She had no idea. _Have adventures_ was as far as she had gotten, which just made her sound like a little girl again.

When they were all lined up in front of the walls, facing the men of the Golden Company who stood above and around the gate, she didn’t _feel_ like a little girl. Or maybe she did, but she felt like a little girl and at once like an old woman who had seen too much. She was so _tired_ , suddenly. Tired of fighting. As disgusting as the sewers had been, she’d felt safer there. Sneaking around was always what she had been good at. She didn’t like this formality. Facing each other like they were all about to have a big, friendly spar and not try to hack each other apart with their swords. She looked back to the distant hill where Sansa and the others were waiting. She could only see shapes of them, but they were distinct, and she knew them.

Tyrion was standing with pretty Missendei, about halfway down the side of the hill, as if they were walking towards the army. Sansa stood at the top, with Bran in his chair beside her. Jaime Lannister stood on Sansa’s other side, and Arya knew that he was just as restless as she was, though for a different reason. He’d been judged too valuable to risk. Cersei, they were sure, would target him. Arya still wasn’t sure if that was true or if they just didn’t trust him to stand against his sister if it came down to it. _Arya_ trusted him. He’d had his chance to leave them. Plenty of them, actually. He’d chosen Brienne and the Starks every time, and she _knew_ that that was what he was going to continue to do. He stood beside Sansa now, ready to protect her, and Arya felt better. They were far enough away from the fighting, but with the rest of her family by her side, it was good to know that Sansa and Bran were being looked after. Just in case.

She craned her neck further behind them, but still she saw no sign of the dragons.

“Where is she?” she asked Robb, who had been watching the men of the Golden Company, his eyes flickering over them as if trying to figure out which one of them was in charge. They’d all expected the leader to ride out and try to start a conversation, but so far no one had appeared. The gates stayed closed, as if they thought that would mean anything. Maybe they thought the dragons were a myth. Maybe they thought it was some trick. Maybe they were just stupid.

“She’s coming,” Robb said grimly.

Arya hoped he was right. The army was getting restless. The men hired by the Iron Bank were out front, and what remained of the Dothraki just behind them. Then came a company of the Unsullied and the Northmen, filling in each other’s ranks. They had both lost a lot of people in the war against the dead. Arya hated being near the back. She wanted to be out front. She wanted to be in the city already. She wanted to be back in the sewers. There were already groups heading in there from the shore with all the sand and the crates to carry out the wildfire, and Arya wished she had been allowed to go with them. Grey Worm had been annoyed by the suggestion that he needed her to supervise his people, so she hadn’t brought it up again, but that hadn’t even been _why_. She wanted to be doing something. Not just standing here uselessly.

“She’d better hurry up,” she muttered. “She’s giving Cersei plenty of time to get things ready.”

Tyrion had been convinced that Cersei wouldn’t detonate the wildfire unless she _knew_ she had no chance. She would wait until the last possible second, because she would think until it was literally hopeless that there was still a way for her to win. Arya wasn’t so sure about that assessment, but Jaime had tentatively agreed with it.

“She thinks a great many things that aren’t true,” he had said, wry and a little annoyed. “And whatever plan she’s cooked up, she’ll be sure it’s brilliant until it’s falling apart around her.”

So the dragons would fly in, and they would hit the gates hard while the army was still far enough back that they would escape harm if there was wildfire in them. They would take out the Golden Company swiftly. Enough Lannister men rode with Daenerys that it would confuse the Lannister soldiers still in the city, and some of their commanders might be able to talk the other Lannisters into surrendering. Tyrion said that the soldiers liked Jaime much more than they liked Cersei, and that if they saw him on the ridge, and if they heard he was with them, they would surrender. Theon and Yara would be heading into the bay now, and they would fight Euron’s ships. When the ships were taken out, that meant that Euron’s mysterious weapons would be taken out, too, and Daenerys could fly her dragon to the Red Keep. Tyrion seemed convinced that there was a chance that Cersei would surrender, then. If she didn’t, the armies would pull back to the gates, and they would wait her out. The wildfire removal would begin in earnest. It would take ages, Tyrion was certain, but he also said it was the only way to be sure that she didn’t destroy the keep. The wildfire caches Arya had seen were in all sorts of places throughout the city, and Tyrion was sure based on his knowledge of wildfire and the construction of the sewers beneath the city that they wouldn’t cause a chain of detonations. They were individual traps, ensuring that if Daenerys brought her dragons over the city, and if her dragons blasted through the wrong spots with their breath, they would be caught and killed in the explosion.

Arya wondered if Cersei was smart enough to realize that surrender was her only way out. Or maybe she did, but she didn’t think it would be worth it. Arya wasn’t sure _how_ Daenerys would punish her, or what Cersei would even _do_ if she was removed from the throne and allowed to live. Stay in the cells forever? Arya couldn’t blame her for not wanting to deal with that. Might as well go out in a blaze, then. Tyrion thought she’d choose poison, but Jaime thought it would be fire for sure. Arya was more on his side of things, she thought.

At last, Arya heard the cheers from the armies further back as Daenerys appeared over the water and then flew towards them, and finally over them, pulling up to hover over the bulk of her army. The shadow of her dragon was huge and terrifying, and Arya looked up, grinning as she watched Drogon above the gates. She waited. The Golden Company watched. Some of the people on the wall broke ranks and fled, but not very many. Daenerys was shouting something down to them, but no one was responding that Arya could hear over the sound of the dragon’s wings beating above. Daenerys spoke some more. Waited. Then she spoke again.

Drogon opened his mouth, and fire rained down.

The gate did not take very long to fall. It seemed to melt, almost, withering away under the power of the dragon’s flame. Even so far from it, Arya could feel the heat on the metal of her armor, and a feeling like hot sunlight on her face, the kind that blistered and turned her skin red. She tried to imagine being one of those men on the walls, but she couldn’t.

When the gate had been turned to melted slag, Daenerys wheeled back over the water, showing off a bit, and then retreated back to where the rest of them were waiting. Arya tried not to feel too disappointed. It was a good idea until Euron’s ships were out of the way. Varys had told them all about the kind of weapons he had, and how easy it would be for him to take down one of the dragons. _Still._ Arya liked watching the dragons. It made everything feel more exciting.

The army marched forward, towards the city. The Iron Bank men were passing through the gate, engaging with the soldiers who waited beyond. Slowly moving forward. Jon and Robb rode ahead to shout commands to their men, but Arya stayed behind with the others. The closer they got to the gates, the stronger the smell got. Like sweet meat. Charred and sickening. Arya tried not to breathe through her nose. She saw the remains of the men who had failed to get off the walls in time.

Maybe she was fine without seeing the dragons in action, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is Wheels within Wheels by Penguin Cafe


	86. Cersei VII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cersei waits for the end

He had not come. The armies were at her gates, but Jaime had not returned.

_Of course he hasn’t_ , she thought, a calm spot beneath the shock and anger. _You knew he wouldn’t_.

Yes, she had known. She had known when she saw the look of confusion and disgust on his face. She had known when he turned and walked away from her. She had known even from the moment he entered the throne room and did not try to approach her the way he would have, once. If he was still Jaime, her Jaime, her sharp and beautiful and cruel mirror, she would have known him. She would have _recognized_ him. Nothing would have been able to keep him away, because he had been gone from her side for so long, and he would have wanted _nothing_ except to return to her. He would have strode closer and closer to the throne until he was able to claim her. She would have called him all manner of horrible things and he would have kissed her anyway, laughing into her throat and calling her _sweet sister_ the way he always did when she was at her most barbed and thorned. He hadn’t ever cared what cruel words she spoke to him. He hadn’t ever wanted her any less.

But the last time…

He hadn’t been _her_ Jaime the last time.

He had stood instead removed and untouchable. Unreachable. He had not approached, and perhaps it might have looked like fear, once. Once she would have called it subservience and she would have been thrilled by it. Or she would have called it weakness and been repulsed by it. But now that she looked back on it, it felt like none of those things. Of course it didn’t; it hadn’t been.

Removed. Remote. Blank. The same Jaime she had despaired of when he was by her side had not grown to miss her as she had assumed and expected he would. No, he had only grown more distant, and it was as if the final tether holding him to her had been not just severed but shattered, leaving her _truly_ alone for the first time she could remember. Had he felt the same thing? Was that why he had looked at her with such hollow disdain?

No, it wasn’t disdain. It was something else. Something worse. _Pity_. He had pitied her. She knew what she looked like to him. Mad. Delusional. She looked it to herself most days, so why wouldn’t he see the same thing? He had always been her mirror. She should not have had to tell him that it wasn’t madness. It wasn’t delusion. It was desperation. It was a dwindling of options. It was panic, feral and wild panic, a trapped animal in a corner facing down pitiless hunters. She would never speak those words aloud. She shouldn’t have to. He should have _known_.

But he hadn’t. He had shown her pity, but it was only pity for a poor, mad creature. Not pity for _her_. He could have been any other man. He didn’t even _look_ like her Jaime anymore, with his odd clothing and his graying hair and his lined face and that awful beard.

He had offered to _save_ her, and so in return, she had offered him what she knew _her_ Jaime had always wanted. Kill the dragon queen, and she would marry him. Who would there be to tell her that she couldn’t? He would be her golden husband, her consort, the one who stood at her back and did her bidding, and she would find it in her heart, that love for him that she could no longer grasp. It was what he had always wanted. Oh, he had framed it in the past like a joke, or a whim, or an idle curiosity, but she could see it behind the colored glass of his eyes. He was never very good at hiding his true self behind them. His true, pathetically soft self, still a boy despite everything that he’d done and seen in his years serving Aerys and Robert. She and their father had prodded his weak and mewling core into the hard shell of a man, but she could still see that pathetic child when she looked too closely. The boy who would sneak into her bed and play with her curls and tell her stories when she was sick or afraid. She had offered that boy everything he wanted, and he had failed.

_He didn’t fail. He didn’t_ want _it. You ruined his love for you, the way you ruined everything else._

No. Not everything else. There was still Euron. There was still the horn. There was still wildfire. They only had to kill the dragons, and then the army would fall. She was sure of it.

_Why would they fall? Who is going to kill them? Your mercenaries_? _You can’t control the dragons. You can’t even control Euron. If that horn of his works,_ he _will have the power, not you. You’ll have to marry him, or he’ll take everything for himself. He’ll kill you and take all of it._

No. No, she wouldn’t marry another unworthy man for power. She couldn’t do it.

_It would be so easy, in some other land_ , Jaime had drawled one night. Glittering and golden. A rare moment of childhood come again in Kings Landing. Robert was hunting, and Tommen was still just a babe, and no one questioned it when she said she wanted her brother guarding her doors. Jaime had been sprawled in bed beside her. He would dress and leave soon, when she told him to, but for the moment he was all lithe muscle and all hers. She had committed it to memory, the way his face turned towards her no matter where she went. He was obsessive, Jaime, and she thrilled in denying him and seeing the desperation on his face. Power. More power. It was the only place she had any, those days.

“What would be easier?” she had asked. Indulging him this once. Motherhood had made her soft. Tommen was so small and delicate, and Myrcella had been adorable, cooing over the new baby with a child’s confusion. Everything had been gilded for at least a moon's turn.

“This,” he said simply, and he touched her, and she had laughed at him. Dismissed him. Saw the way he hid his dashed hopes behind a sarcastic glimmer of a laugh like he hadn’t been serious at all.

Where were they now? Where were they, those beautiful golden lovers? Had they escaped across the sea with their children? Did Jaime still have both his hands? Were their children still alive? Were they somewhere sunny and warm and free? Were they married? She couldn’t imagine it. She never would have run.

If only Jaime had done as she had charged him. It would have solved everything. She could have married him then without having to give up anything, and perhaps there could have been another child, and perhaps she could have remembered herself, that self she rarely allowed herself to be, the woman who had loved him.

_He would have died in the attempt_ , she reminded herself, and then, _perhaps he already has._

Maybe that was the answer. Maybe she hadn’t misjudged him so horribly. Maybe he had done his best. She’d known from the start that it would be a difficult thing for him to do. Surely the dragon queen was guarded by plenty of men with both their hands, and Jaime had killed the girl's father. She probably hadn’t let him get close enough to do it. But maybe he tried. Maybe he tried for her and now was dead.

She couldn’t fool herself anymore. The time for that had passed. No, Jaime had not tried. He had not done anything. He would not risk his life or his new position in the dragon queen’s army, and he wouldn’t risk all the other gifts he had been granted.

Qyburn was the one who told her, gleaned from whispers from spies that moved through the city. At first, it had seemed obvious. Jaime was often seen in the company of Sansa Stark, that murderous whore. She had bewitched him somehow, taken Jaime away with her softness and her sweetness and her beauty. Cersei had thought Sansa too stupid to make the attempt before, but now she knew better. The little wolf was clever after all. Clever enough to wear an innocent face and tempt Jaime to her side.

Then, “your brother has betrothed himself openly to Brienne of Tarth,” Qyburn said, and she had laughed at him, and she had called it nonsense, and she had allowed her hatred later, when she was alone.

Of course he had. _Of course he had_. He wouldn’t be content with fucking the creature. Not this new Jaime, this man who craved a fool’s sense of honor and abandoned his reason for the chance at it. Of course they were betrothed. Cersei had been too much an idiot to see it earlier, but she had lost Jaime long ago. He had always been too soft and too weak and too convinced that he had to be _good_. Honorable. As much as he pretended not to care when men sneered about his lack of it, _she_ knew. _She_ saw. She ignored it and pushed it away and kissed him harder and left marks from her nails on his skin beneath his armor because it goaded him to respond and made him stop thinking about it, and that was the Jaime she wanted. The Jaime who would laugh with her and hate everyone in the world but them. That sarcastic mask that slid over the softness and hid it from sight so she didn’t have to look at it. No wonder she’d hated that fucking stump so much. That vulnerable way he always tried to hide it, the way his eyes skittered away from hers when she sneered at it. It made him weaker than ever. It broke through the armor she and her father had forced him into, and she had _hated_ what remained beneath.

She should have seen it then, when he returned to her _different_ , altered, broken. Short a hand and short the balls he used to have to stand against everybody else. She should have seen the way he looked at that _Brienne of Tarth_ , and she should have realized that it was the same fool way the girl looked at _him_. Everyone wanted Jaime. Everyone lusted after Jaime. Even those who called him _Kingslayer_ behind his back and sneered about his treachery could not help but want him, because he was a man sculpted by the gods to be admired, just as she was that same woman. It had not been a surprising thing or an odd thing for Brienne of Tarth to love Jaime, though she had seemed surprised enough when Cersei made the accusation.

Why had Cersei not noticed that her brother shared the same look? Why had she not noticed that he seemed different. _In_ different, even, to both her cruelties and her passions. Later, she’d reclaimed him, but that was only after the enormous woman was gone, wasn’t it? She’d disappeared, but Cersei had hardly even noticed. Her sweet boy was dead, and Tyrion had killed him, and _that_ was why she and Jaime fought. They never spoke of Brienne of Tarth. Why would they?

Yes, it all made sense now. She thought he was moving away because she had pushed him, but that wasn’t it at all. Had he been deceiving her all this time? Had he been _aching_ to go? Had he found that creature again in the Riverlands? He had seemed so unlike himself when he returned from Riverrun. That was when she first noticed that his heart was no longer wholly hers. She thought it was about the sept, about their children, but no, it must have been Brienne of Tarth, all along.

She wasn’t even angry. That was the most startling thing. It didn’t fill her with rage to think of Jaime kissing the foolish cow, fucking her, dousing out the candles so he could pretend her face prettier than it was. No, it didn’t make her angry, though it should have. It should have driven her half to madness, but it was so absurd that she couldn’t even _imagine_ it. She tried to picture him standing on his toes to claim a kiss, and it almost made her want to laugh. Men did not want, did not _fuck_ women who were as strong as them. Not men who were _true_ men, anyway. Was that truly who Jaime was?

There was a squirming of something inside her. Sadness. Want. _Sorrow_.

_How did it come to this? We were meant to be together, and now we’re not. At the end. I would have at least liked…_

She stopped the thought. She couldn’t afford it.

She’d thought of little else but the dragon queen since. Jaime, she had banished, back to the corners of her mind where she did not have to confront his memory or his disappointment or the fact that he had rejected her. _Him_. Jaime. The only man she had ever loved. He had failed her. He had failed her, and she would not think of him anymore. She would not think of him trying to kiss that creature, or standing by Sansa Stark’s side, or laughing with Tyrion over meals. She wouldn’t think of it, because it wouldn’t do her any good to think of it. He had made his choices, and he would burn with the rest. He had better hope that he died quickly in the battle, because if he lived when she regained control, she would make sure he would not die until he understood just what a mistake it had been to stand against her. Her brother. Her love.

* * *

Cersei watched as the dragon queen approached the gates. Alive and unharmed. Proof she didn’t need that her brother had failed.

She watched as her Golden Company burned.

She saw the sunlight glinting off the armor of the men that waited outside the walls.

Her small council had all assured her that the dragon queen’s forces would have been heavily depleted by the fight against the dead, but that had been days ago, when they still remained in the city. Most of them had fled across the sea by now. They had asked her to join them, but she had refused. She would not leave Kings Landing alive. She was certain of that now. In her castle, on her throne, she was strong. She had power. Across the sea…

She had not fled across the sea for love, and she would not to do it now. What would she be saving? Her _life_? What good was a life when it was without power? It was _this_ she wanted. The throne. The crown. The kingdom. If she could not have it, then she would not live. It was as simple as that. She once felt fear at the thought of dying. She sat on this very throne with Tommen in her lap, and she had cried true tears for herself, for her children, for her failures. For Jaime. Now, she watched her gates burn. She watched the horrors down below. She felt almost nothing.

She’d sent most of her servants away, turning them loose in the streets. Her handmaids had helped her dress this morning, and then she had released them. Wylla, the idiot girl, had wanted to stay by her side, but Cersei had her removed with the rest, and now the castle was empty but for her and Qyburn and The Mountain. The tunnels beneath the castle were secured with tripwires and traps designed by Qyburn to catch any little mice who might try to sneak in, and she felt a kind of thrill to know that at any moment, the entire keep could burn, with her inside it. She almost preferred it like this. There was an echoing quality to her footsteps that mirrored something within her. Completeness, maybe. Resignation. No, she wasn’t afraid anymore. This, all of this, it made sense. It felt right.

She had made so many mistakes.

This feeling had settled over her, like a warm blanket, like the furs she had piled on her bed in Winterfell when they stayed there, all that time ago. She had buried herself beneath them, safe and warm within the hellish cold of that castle, and she felt that same warmth now as she watched the men on that gate burn.

Yes, she would burn, but it would be her own fire.

Jaime had abandoned her. Just like everyone else. But she had not abandoned herself. She had not given up. She could not decide if she was proud of that or if she pitied herself for it. That old witch told her that she would have three children, and she told her that they would die. How was it that Cersei thought she could escape that? She had pretended not to believe her, but she _had_ , hadn’t she? All these years, fearing a younger and more beautiful queen. Fearing Tyrion. Fearing all of them. Everyone who meant to take her place. Everyone who meant to harm her children. It had all come to pass, no matter what she did to try and stop it. Daenerys was here, with Sansa Stark, both of them meaning to take her crown. Brienne of Tarth, _Brienne the Beauty_ , had taken Jaime from her. She wished she could shake that old bitch by her shoulders and ask her which of the women in her life she was supposed to fear the most. She had lived in fear of them for so long, and it hadn’t done her any good. Elia Martell. Lyanna Stark. Margaery Tyrell. Sansa Stark. Everything she had done had driven them to oppose her, all that fear turning to hate and making them hate her in turn. She was such an idiot. She was such a fool.

It was too late for regrets, and she would not allow herself to linger on them. Qyburn watched her. She and her two monsters made their way back to the throne. The Mountain would not flee. He would not run from death either. Perhaps he would even be glad for it, in whatever part of his brain lived enough to understand what kind of creature he had become.

Would Jaime feel her die? She had always been convinced that she would feel it when _he_ left the world. She had lived in it without her brother for only seconds, and it seemed to her that that should create some kind of divine bond. Some connection that death could sever, but not without a fight. She would feel it if he left her, like a hole in her heart that would never be filled. Would he feel _her_? Or was he so lost to her that he wouldn’t even notice?

No, he wouldn’t notice. She was sure of it. Maudlin in her final moments. She had been so convinced when she was a girl that they could not live without each other, but she had survived for years and years without him at her side, only having him in fleeting moments. Everything was different from when they were children. Everything _had_ been different for so long, and it was only habit that brought them together. Habit and a desire to have what the world said she could not. She could not recall his face and think of love. She could remember it. She could remember the way he filled her and made her feel whole. When they were together…

But no. Not anymore. Not for a long time. When had he left her heart? When had she stopped loving her brother? She didn’t know. It was impossible now. He didn’t love her any longer. He couldn’t, or he never would have abandoned her. It wasn’t _Jaime_ , to abandon those he loved.

She imagined that the armies were entering the city. She had seen Lannister standards out on the field, and she had thrown her wine goblet across the room. Now, she thought it only fitting that even her house’s soldiers were turned against one another, much as she stood against her brothers. She sat on her throne. Qyburn was watching her. He hovered near her. He had hovered near her when she stood on her balcony, too, and she had found herself wondering if he feared she would jump or if he was thinking of pushing her.

No, she would not jump. She would not end her life in the same way her son had. Weakly, like a lamb. She was a lion, and she would leave this world with a roar.

_All is lost. Why can’t you see that?_ It was Jaime’s voice she heard. Jaime’s voice, as if he stood beside her, reminding her that he had tried to help her. He never got tired of reminding her of that, did he? He was always so smug. _We have so many enemies_ , he said. _How can you not understand you have already lost? How can you not know?_ As if she was the idiot and he the wise one, trying to help.

She and Jaime and Tyrion were all that was left. No more Lannisters. No more legacy. Tyrion had seen to that. Tyrion had been the cause of all of it. He sent Myrcella to Dorne. He poisoned Joffrey and enlisted Oberyn Martell to fight against The Mountain, and Myrcella died for it. He killed their father and left room for the Tyrells to gain a stronger foothold with Tommen. And now he had brought the dragon queen _here_. He used to say so many pretty words about how he loved his family, but it was never true. It was Jaime who loved his family. Tyrion loved only himself. Only the power he could gain. He was probably delighted with all of this.

She would never give him the satisfaction of taking her alive. She would never give him the satisfaction of taking her city from her. If he wanted it, he could come and take it, but she would make sure that the taste of victory was a bitter one, and impossible to savor.

“Qyburn,” she said. “Signal to Euron. It’s time.”

“Of course, your grace. Will you prepare to evacuate? The boat...”

“No,” Cersei said. They’d had this conversation before. She couldn’t tell if Qyburn _wanted_ her to flee, or if he hoped that she would stay and he would be free of her. Sometimes he looked so sad when he watched her. Sometimes he looked half in terror. She could never tell which had won, in the end. Even as she looked at him now, she couldn’t tell. Pity, she thought. All of it was pity. Pity for the poor mad queen who was mad enough to stay but sane enough to know exactly what she was doing. No, it wasn’t madness. The calm had settled over her, and she knew it wasn’t madness. She had been afraid, but she wasn’t afraid anymore. She had seen the beauty and the power of wildfire once, and she knew it would be quick. “You are dismissed. Flee if you will, but I will stay on my throne. If Daenerys Targaryen means to have my city, she will take it on my terms.”

Qyburn did not bother to respond. He pressed her hand briefly, an oddly intimate touch that she did not hate as she would have once. Then he bowed to her, and then he left, his footsteps fast and frantic as he headed to the tower to signal to Euron. He would ring the bells, and Euron would blow his horn. If it worked, the dragon queen would burn by the flames of her own monsters.

The Starks. The traitorous Lannister soldiers. 

Tyrion. Her brother.

Jaime. Her twin.

They all would burn. If she survived, Cersei would be left queen of the ashes.

And if she didn’t, well. She was prepared for that, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is, obviously, Light of the Seven by Ramin Djawadi


	87. Sansa XV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Battle for Kings Landing ends

Jaime was her friend, and Sansa loved him in a way that was difficult to define and impossible to describe aloud without talking herself into circles.

But, _gods_. He was so annoying sometimes.

He’d complained about being talked into staying back instead of joining the army in the final assault of Kings Landing. Even when Sansa goaded him into admitting that he wouldn’t want to face Cersei, he still refused to acknowledge that they had a point in keeping him away from the sack of the city. It was Brienne who talked him into it, though Sansa didn’t know what she had said; it made Jaime look sad and tense afterward, but he had kissed Brienne’s hand and made her blush, and he had smiled when he saw her off, and Sansa knew that he didn’t want her to feel guilty. He paced when she was gone, his left hand clutching at the pommel of his sword. He had complained about their formation and the fact that they were underutilizing his best men. He’d complained about the use of the dragon to attack the Golden Company, claiming that it was too dangerous—even though he trusted Arya’s judgement—to assume that Cersei didn’t have wildfire near the gates.

He complained endlessly, and he paced nervously, and he kept trying to peer at the field below like he thought he was going to be able to see Brienne from this distance. Tyrion lasted less than an hour in his presence before he walked away to check in with Varys and then didn’t come back. Bran watched and frowned and said nothing. Sansa had her own nervousness. She had said her goodbyes to most of her family earlier, wishing them luck and trying not to think of them riding off into danger _again_. She had hugged Robb and kissed Arya’s forehead and laughed at her when Arya wiped it off aggressively. She had hugged Brienne, too, and smiled at her retreating back and the way she flushed red and pleased when Sansa wished her luck and promised that she would keep her eye on Jaime. She had hugged Daenerys, pressing her close, feeling an overwhelming need to say goodbye, just in case it was the last time.

She’d been nervous the night before, pacing in her tent, and it was Jon who came and found her. They had tended to avoid each other on the road, not wanting to make the others uncomfortable until they could address their love properly with a marriage so that everyone could pretend that it was a political choice and not one made for love. Not that it seemed necessary, given that Robb was happy enough with it, and Bran didn’t care much about anything, and Arya was the one who pushed them to admit it to each other and to themselves. But there was just something about it that made Sansa nervous, made her worry about showing too much affection for him, especially now that they were so close.

Maybe she hadn’t recovered fully yet. Maybe that was all it was. The last time she was in Kings Landing, everything had to be hidden. Everything had to be covered up and pushed away and kept in the dark because her emotions meant that she or someone close to her would be killed. Her fondness for Shae. Her hatred for Joffrey. Her fear of Cersei. All of it had to be concealed behind a pleasant little mask because otherwise…

Well. It didn’t matter, in the end. She’d hidden everything and still she had been tortured for things she couldn’t control, and still she woke gasping from dreams in which Joffrey or Cersei or Tywin sneered at her as they pronounced it was her turn to have her head cut off in front of everyone. She forgot what her own father’s face looked like more often than not, but she would wake with the remembrance behind her eyes, the way he looked at her and then the way he bowed his head before the sword took it. She would wake and go out to the fire, where someone was always on guard. She would sit between Jaime and Brienne, their swords melted down from the one she had just dreamt about, and she would close her eyes and breathe and listen to their conversation. That time was over now. Ice was gone, and her sworn swords were in its place. She didn’t have to fear.

But still, with Jon... She was terrified of showing her love for Jon. What if Cersei saw? What if Littlefinger knew? What if there was someone else, some foe they hadn’t even considered, who was going to come in and twist her love for Jon into something they could use against her? How had she ever thought that she could just marry him and love him and that she wouldn’t be afraid every time she thought of showing it?

But Jon was Jon, and he was impossible to stay away from for long, especially now that there was nothing but time that stood in their way.

So when he arrived in her tent, she kissed him. Strong and certain, so he would know exactly how she felt.

“Are you all right?” he had asked, and she had nodded, and she had meant it, but she had been terrified, too.

_I should never have left Winterfell_.

She had the thought often. Quiet and small or loud and furious. It had haunted her all the way from Winterfell to Kings Landing, and now it was clanging in her ears and in her veins, her heartbeat wild and her breathing short. Jaime paced and complained, and Sansa stood and suffered quietly, as was her way.

Jon had been desperate when he said his goodbyes. He was good at hiding, too. He had learned it for different reasons that sometimes seemed the same when he described them. The need to hide himself and become a different person. She could understand him. That was another thing that had surprised her: the fact that their journeys were so different on the surface but so similar below it. She understood him so much better than she understood anyone else. When they were together…

_After. After_. It kept ringing in her ears. _We will be together after_. But after felt so far away when he was gone now, down with the armies, down with Robb and Arya and Brienne and all the rest while Sansa and Jaime stood here, on the ridge, useless.

She understood why Jaime paced and snarled and hated the forced inaction. She would probably hate it too if it wasn’t the only thing she had ever known. She thought of the Blackwater again, and she thought of Winterfell. Standing with her hand in Missandei’s as they waited for the doors to break down. Hearing Lyanna Mormont shouting, her thin reedy voice rising above the rest as she screamed out for her soldiers to fire, to pour pitch, to do anything to slow the wights. There had been nothing to do but pray, though Sansa scarcely knew what she believed anymore. She had prayed, and Missandei had prayed as well, their voices carrying through the sounds of war from outside and the cries of the wounded and the sobs of the close-to-dying. More voices had joined them. Nurses and servants and the injured themselves. Their voices had not drowned out the screams and the sounds of the wights, but it had been enough to give her back some hope. Hope could be so foolish and dangerous, but she had allowed it in, and she had felt it, and they had _won_.

And all she had done was stand and pray.

“Jaime, there’s nothing we can do from up here,” she said, and he huffed and paced again. A caged lion, grumpy and refusing to rest. Refusing to admit he needed to. “Jaime,” she said, and he looked at her. Wild and uncontained. She remembered being so afraid of him once for the exact opposite temperament. He had been calm, collected, smooth and terrifying because of it. His smile. His laughter. A mask. Even as a child, she had known that there was something to fear in men who didn’t wear their hearts openly. Now, she was unafraid of even his most wild moods, because she knew him. He didn’t wear a mask anymore.

He softened as he looked at her, and he stopped his pacing, returning to stand with her. She took his arm to keep him standing beside her, and he allowed it, like a true knight from a story. For all his posturing and all his sins, he was one of the truest knights she had ever met. She thought of the rest of the Kingsguard and the horrible things they had done for Joffrey. She wondered if Jaime would have done the same. It was hard to imagine it, but she knew that he claimed himself to be a different man, then. Perhaps it didn’t matter what he would have done, only what he would do now, and she trusted him. She would not trade him at her side for anything.

She didn’t know what would happen after. Brienne indicted that she would like to keep serving Sansa when the wars were done, but they hadn’t spoken of it since Jaime and Brienne decided to marry, and Sansa knew that they would need to leave eventually. She understood it, would support it, and yet she felt that everyone was slipping away from her very quickly, and she found herself holding tighter to Jaime’s maimed arm as a comfort. No matter where he and Brienne ended up in the future, he was beside her _now_ , and that was what mattered.

They stood together and watched the gates fall to the flames from Drogon. Sansa watched her family march forward into the city, and at every moment she was bracing for an explosion. Jaime was too; she could feel the tension in his arm where she held it. But the armies began to move forward, and there was nothing, and she could breathe again.

She was so tired of this. Of _watching_. Arya taught her how to use a dagger, and she even felt confident that she could use it if she had to, but she would never be a warrior like Arya or Brienne. She would never be strong enough to ride into battle. She was left behind, always left behind, while her family rode into danger. She was so far from them. There would be nothing she could do if they fell. Only _watching._

At least this time, she stood beside Bran. She knew where he was, and she could watch over him, and she could protect him if she had to. He hadn’t said much since they arrived. He was watching too, his brow furrowed. She knew he was concerned, but he had often been concerned since he returned to them, and he rarely answered their questions. Arya could sometimes get through to him by pestering him for long enough, but Sansa didn’t have the heart for it.

The air teemed with the sounds of battle and the smell of smoke and something sweeter that made her stomach turn. She looked past Jaime to see Missandei looking back at her. The other woman gave her a wan smile, and Sansa returned it. They had both had more than enough of this, facing down the battle within the walls of Winterfell. Missandei had been a constant presence, a help and a friend and a companion when the end was upon them. Sansa was glad that they were still together. It was a comfort to have her here now.

A comfort to know that she wasn’t the only one worrying about the man she loved, down there somewhere.

The progress into the city was as slow as they had been warned it would be, and yet it somehow seemed even _slower_. Sansa wondered if there was anything worrisome delaying their progress, but Bran hadn’t spoken, and so she didn’t ask. Jaime returned to pacing, though at least this time he walked further, spoke to his brother, and then returned, so it was a longer circle, and she didn’t feel his tension so keenly. When he returned to her side, she could see the agony on his face that she felt inside herself. The agony of waiting. Of not knowing. Of not being able to help. She knew it didn’t matter. Whatever she said, it wouldn’t be enough. It wasn’t even enough for herself, and Jaime had been in battle before. He knew better than Sansa exactly what was happening down there. She held his arm tighter and tried to soothe him, but she didn’t dare speak.

None of them were speaking. They were watching, and hoping, and praying silently all around her, but they didn’t speak. Rhaegal, down behind them, shifted. Drogon landed, and Daenerys climbed up the ridge to join Tyrion, triumphant and beautiful. Jaime tensed, like he wanted to keep pacing, but he stayed by Sansa’s side.

And then there was another sound. Quiet, at first, but growing steadily louder. Bells. The tolling of bells. Sansa looked down the line and met Tyrion’s eyes. Was it so simple? Was Cersei dead? But the bells did not ring for long. Just a few uneven, panicked-sounding peals, and then a lingering silence. When the silence was done, something else followed.

It was a long, deep lowing sound that seemed to shake the ground and made Sansa want to cover her ears like a child and hide in Jaime’s embrace. He had one arm around her already, poised to pull her away, though his eyes darted around the city in front of them, searching for the source. It seemed to come from everywhere at once. Sansa remembered Edd and Tormund saying that a horn was what brought the wall down. She wondered if it sounded anything like this. She wondered if the Night King was back. She wondered if…

“The dragons,” Bran said, so quietly that Sansa almost didn’t hear above the sound that vibrated around them.

“What?” she asked.

As if Bran’s words had ordered it, Rhaegal screeched behind them, his wings unfurling, his breath hot as he shot flame into the air. He took off, careening awkwardly backwards and then forwards again, as if he was trying to shake something off. Jaime pulled her back, and she allowed it, though she was not yet afraid, and she didn’t understand. Rhaegal opened his mouth again, and Jaime was yelling something, and Daenerys was shouting further down the hill. Sansa could see Rhaegal’s mouth open, flame building and swirling inside his mouth. Jaime stood in front of her.

_He’s going to kill us_ , she thought, fascinated and confused and still not afraid, and then Rhaegal’s head snapped back, his neck craning upwards, and he released the flame into the air before he flapped his wings and fled, shooting towards the city in a whirl of wind that took her breath.

“Sansa!” Jaime was shouting, and then Sansa was shaking, and she realized that she was clenching her fingers into fists so tight that she was digging bloody half-circles into her skin.

“He can control them,” Bran said, as if nothing had happened, but there was a strain in his voice.

The horn sounded again. Jaime was holding one of her wrists. His eyes were bulging with fear when they met hers. It was beginning to creep into her, finally. The terror. Drogon rose into the air as well, leaving Daenerys behind as she screamed her dragon’s name, trying to call him back to himself.

“No!” Tyrion shouted, following her as she started to run down the hill, toward the city. “Daenerys!”

Jaime took several absent steps forward, eyes fixed, drawn to Kings Landing, and Sansa could see the horror in his expression as Rhaegal flew across the field before it.

“No,” Sansa whispered, and she could not watch, but she also could not look away.

Rhaegal opened his mouth as he reached the walls of the city, and he rained fire. Daenerys was screaming somewhere. Missandei followed her. The armies still outside the walls were scattering, their formation forgotten. Sansa could not see anything. No standards. No sigils. She didn’t know where her family was. She only knew that there was wildfire in there, and that if the dragons could not be contained, everything would be lost.

“Call the armies off!” Jaime shouted to Varys. “Sound the retreat!” The soldiers still remaining on the hill blew their own horns, but it was too late for that. So many of the soldiers were already in the city. Drogon was on the approach, opening his mouth as well, and Rhaegal rose, fell, slammed into the side of a building and then rose again, opening his jaw to spit more fire at the city below. Fighting a losing battle against whatever horrid magic compelled him.

Her family. Her family was in that city.

“Bran?” she asked. She was holding tight to the handles of his chair. “Bran, what should we do?”

Drogon released another mighty roar. Sansa tried to think. She tried to see anything down below. They were in the back, weren’t they? Her family. Maybe they weren’t in the city yet. She didn’t know. She didn’t remember. It didn’t matter. They would all die in there unless something stopped the dragons. The air was filled with screams. She couldn’t hear anything else. A building collapsed beneath the heat of the dragon’s flames, and she watched and bit back screams of her own.

It was _impossible_. It was impossible. They had never considered this. Even as she was seeing it…she remembered seeing the dragons for the first time. The scope of them. She remembered how afraid she was, thinking that if those dragons were turned against her family…and now they were. Now they were, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

“Jaime!” she shouted. He was near the edge of the hill, looking down at Daenerys and his brother and Missandei and all the others that raced toward the city. They would never make it in time, and even if they did, there was nothing they could do. “Jaime!”

“Brienne is down there,” he said, oddly quiet and oddly calm, turning to look at her. She understood. She saw his agony, and she knew it, and it was her own agony writ on her friend’s face. She released Bran’s chair, and she went to Jaime, and she took his hand. She begged him with her eyes.

“I know,” she said, and her expression crumbled at the same time his did.

Nothing. There was nothing they could do. She wrapped her arms around him. She needed to keep him with her. He couldn’t leave with the others. There was nothing either of them could do. _Please. Please stay with me._ She wanted to tell him…she hardly knew. It wouldn’t matter. Words couldn’t. Varys was staring blankly as the dragons opened fire again. All his cleverness. All his plots. It hadn’t mattered, in the end, had it? Sansa wanted to laugh. People like them were useless in the face of this kind of destructive power, weren’t they?

“They’re going to destroy the city,” Varys said, and Jaime buried his face in Sansa’s shoulder.

“They would,” Bran agreed tonelessly. Sansa turned to look at him, and she saw his eyes roll back and become white.

Over Kings Landing, Drogon suddenly dipped. His claws tore enormous rents in the top of a roof. His body was ungainly, slipping on the tile. Then he righted himself, and Sansa knew. He wheeled in the air, and he turned on Rhaegal. Rhaegal had opened his mouth to fire another blast down into the streets, but Drogon slammed into him, his claws out, pushing him into a tower. The building crumbled around the two fighting creatures. Rhaegal snapped at Drogon, and Drogon bit back, lashing his tail and catching Rhaegal in the neck. Daenerys had stopped running, and she watched, gaping at the sky as her children turned on one another.

“It’s Bran,” Sansa said. She held tighter to Jaime. She looked down at her little brother. “It’s _Bran_.”

Jaime looked at her, and then at the sky. He shook his head. He looked back at Bran slumped in his chair. Jaime’s eyes were enormous and white, his expression panicked, confused, but Sansa understood. Drogon roared and dove at Rhaegal, but the horn sounded again, and Rhaegal turned again on the city.

Bran in Drogon flew toward the docks, opening fire on the boats that gathered there, fighting their own fight. _Theon’s down there!_ Sansa wanted to cry, but she knew that it couldn’t matter. It _wouldn’t_ matter, not to Bran, and it couldn’t matter to any of them. Not if they wanted to save the city. The horn sounded again. Rhaegal had charged after Drogon. He opened fire on him, on the docks, on the rocky coast, on anything within reach.

“Not there,” Varys moaned. “There’s a passage…”

“The crypts,” Jaime agreed.

“The wildfire,” Varys said. Sansa pulled free of Jaime, and she ran back to Bran’s chair. She crouched before him. She took his face in her hands.

“Bran!” she begged. “Bran, can you hear me? You have to stop him. The crypts, Bran! The wildfire is down there. He-”

The breath was stolen from her lungs by the force of the blast, knocking her to her knees, slamming her forward into Bran’s chair. There was a sound like a scream, a loud whine that seemed to pop the air and suck everything out of it. Jaime was behind her, shielding she and Bran both, but she stood, and clutched him, and gazed around him.

It was green. All green. The sound came after the light, delayed. An explosion.

_She’s got it all piled below the keep_ , Arya had said.

A poisonous wind blew over them. Sansa could not describe the smell or the feel of it, hot and sticky against her skin. She clutched Jaime tighter. She watched. Varys was shielding his eyes. Daenerys had fallen to her knees on the grass below, and Missandei had fallen with her. Tyrion kept walking closer, closer, staring up at the city in horror. Green. Everything green. Green flame that flew in spurts like the time Bran climbed a tree and then dropped a heavy rock into the pond. He’d splashed her. She had been so angry.

The dragons. The docks. The Red Keep. Half the city. When the green went away, all of it was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the songs for this chapter are In my Dream Last Night by Jake Sidwell and Arcanine by Ursine Vulpine


	88. Daenerys XI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daenerys stands in the Red Keep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think? I'm going to try to finish this off today. I'll post the first three right now, and then see how i'm feeling about the final chapter later!

She never got the chance to see it when it was whole.

The Red Keep. The seat of her ancestors. Her _destiny_.

She had longed to see it as a child. She had listened to stories and had painted pictures in her mind of grand archways and beautiful colored tapestries and a castle that would withstand any siege. She would close her eyes and see it. Towers and turrets and battlements. It was where she would be _safe_ , when Viserys managed to take it back again. She could not fully imagine such an enormous place. When she and Viserys had gone to live in Illyrio’s manse, she had imagined that the Red Keep would look something like it. What would anyone need with a larger home than that? When she saw it for the first time in truth, in the far distance as she rode on Drogon’s back, she had laughed at the girl she used to be, who thought so simply.

Her girlish fantasies had faded, but her longing for the Red Keep had not. There was a time when she had wanted the throne to the exclusion of everything else. It didn’t even feel like it _was_ a want. It felt like something that she _had_ to do. Some calling that was impossible to ignore.

The only thing that mattered. Everything she did, she did it to take back her family’s throne. Their legacy. Their power.

She had seen it once. The throne room. The throne. Never in life, but she knew that her vision in the House of the Undying would have been accurate. The stained glass window behind it. The steps that led up to it. The enticing sharpness of the swords that made up the chair. Her fingers had reached for the throne but never touched it. She had longed to sit on it but never did. Why had she not realized it then? Why had she not turned back when she still could have? It was never going to be hers. The vision told her that more plainly than any of her losses, and yet she had ignored every sign. She had lost and bled and sacrificed, and it was all for nothing.

The Iron Throne was gone.

She had struggled. Suffered. Fought. She had clawed at the hard ground of the wasted land of the Dothraki Sea, and she dug up whatever she could, ripping off her fingernails and scraping her flesh on rock and sand, and she had molded that unyielding clay into an army. She had built herself a _people_ , a family, and she had found herself power when the world tried, over and over, to take every bit of it away from her.

She was a beggar who became a Khaleesi, and a Khaleesi who would become a queen.

She was that queen now. Her rival for the throne was dead. Cersei Lannister burned with the Red Keep, and the Iron Throne, and the crown. She would be the last person to sit on it. The last person to rule from the Targaryen seat of power. It was wrong. It was all wrong. It wasn’t what was supposed to happen, and yet it had.

Cersei Lannister was dead. Jon Snow, her nephew, her brother’s legitimate son, wanted nothing to do with ruling, and he had gladly turned his claim over to her. There was no one who stood in her way, and she could put any chair down in the center of this rubble and claim Westeros for herself. In the eyes of everyone who yet lived, that was exactly what she had done.

_I didn’t mean to_ , she wanted to say, like a pathetic, mewling child. _I didn’t want it like this_.

Thousands dead. Her dragons dead. The city in ruins.

Ashes. Soot and ashes and blood, and that was it. _Fire and blood._ She never meant for those to be the words that described her the most, and yet they were the only words she could think. It was what was promised by her name. Her legacy. _Fire and blood._ It was exactly what she had delivered. _What have I done?_

_It was Cersei. Cersei did this._

_Cersei did it, and so did you._

Was this the prize for which she had sacrificed so much? The largest city in Westeros devastated. Even what parts of it had escaped the wildfire had been bombarded by debris and burned by her own dragons and reduced to little more than rubble with enough buildings left standing to form a rather large village. Her army had been devastated by the dead, and further culled by her own children and the flames that followed. Thousands of innocent people had been killed, and thousands more would die in the days to come, as the wounded perished and the supplies ran low. Arya had been right; for all the time they spent in getting people out of the city, in the end there had been too many left inside, and those innocents had burned with Cersei.

What had it all been for? The crown? The throne? The crown had melted on Cersei Lannister’s head, and the throne had melted beneath her. There was only ash where the Targaryens had once held court. There was only death around it now.

Dany would never have power here.

She remembered how she felt when she first came to Westeros. Unsettled. Disappointed but refusing to show it. She had longed for something larger. Some feeling of a purpose fulfilled. She was returning to the place of her birth; she should have been filled with a sense of rightness, or an excitement to proceed, or _anything_.

_I will feel it when I stand before the throne_ , she had consoled herself. Every step that didn’t satisfy the hunger inside her was only a delay. A pause before she would feel the things that she was meant to feel.

She felt something now. Grief. Regret. Horror. She had gone numb immediately afterward, when she raced through the city streets with her people, helping the ones who could be helped and looking for her family. She could not think of anything but her dragons. Everything had happened so quickly, all the worst of her fears coming true at once, and so she had been numb to the horrors she had seen. She saw bodies crushed, blood staining the ground beneath them. She smelled burning men, and the sickening sweetness of wildfire that seemed to cling to everything like an oily sheen, a skin that layered on top of her own and made her feel foul. She remembered all of it now, but in the moment she didn’t think about any of it. She only acted, her body moving of its own volition, her mind insulating her from the worst of it. She couldn’t look at any of it. She couldn’t _deal_ with any of it. She stayed numb. She _had_ to.

But the feelings had crept back in, as hours passed and the numbness gave way to fury and sadness and everything else at once. She stood now in the center of the ash heap that she knew had once been the Red Keep. The floor had collapsed into the crypts below, and it had been a treacherous half-climb, half-slide to make her way down, but she felt that she needed to do it. She crouched, her knees protesting after hours on her feet. She touched the ash, running her fingers through it. Searching for a connection here just as she had searched for a connection at Dragonstone.

She didn’t feel it now, either. Of course she didn’t. What was this place to her but a story once told to a girl who dreamed of ruling?

_You should have listened_.

She should have waited for reinforcements, wherever they came from. She should have traded more aggressively, for more food, to supply her armies. She should have turned it into a siege, even.

It wouldn’t have mattered. Cersei was always going to find a way to poison this victory. If Daenerys had done things slowly, it still would have resulted in this.

Or maybe she was still just making excuses. She didn’t know. She couldn’t tell. She hadn’t had the time to figure out how she felt, yet. How much she blamed herself. How much she hated Cersei Lannister for what she had done. How much she blamed Tyrion and Varys and herself and all of them for thinking that this would be simple. Perhaps it was something she was never going to quite figure out, just like Meereen. Perhaps this was another failure she would carry for the rest of her life, like failing to save Drogo. Perhaps. It had only been a few hours. There was so much longer to go. 

It was only for a moment, but for that moment, the fact of her survival was the most exhausting thing in the world.

She straightened, and she let the ash fall. She remembered her vision. The way the snow fell on the throne. Maybe it had been ash, after all. She had wondered, back when she first learned that Jon Snow was the legitimate heir to the throne, if her vision was telling her that it was her nephew who would take Westeros in the end. But he hadn’t wanted it, and he had followed her loyally, and she had refused to give way to the paranoid part of her mind that wanted to see traitors everywhere because of the things she had been told in her vision. She had had enough false friends in her life, but the Starks were different. They hadn’t ever let her down.

And she was right, anyway: it wasn’t Jon Snow at all. It was her. Her throne. Her crown. Her _ash_ , now.

Or maybe it was just a prophecy, just nonsense, just something that she should not have trusted. Perhaps it was a warning, and she should have given the throne to Jon Snow to prevent it. Perhaps she should have stayed across the sea and trusted that she would never have touched the throne, or perhaps it didn’t have any bearing on anything. She’d had enough of prophecies. What had they ever given her?

A crater. A kingdom in ruins. That was what she had bought with her efforts. With her sacrifices and the sacrifices of the people around her. _This_ was it. This was what Jorah and Irri and Rakharo and all the rest had died for. _This_.

Her husband found her. He, like everyone, was covered in ash and soot and blood. There was white in his hair, and the powder was matted in places from a cut on the top of his head where he had been struck by falling rocks. She had seen him as she made her way through the city. He and Brienne had been pulling wounded from the wreckage, and she and Missandei had stopped to help however they could. Hours ago, now.

He stood before her, looking every bit himself. Not special and divine. Not burdened with a purpose or a destiny. She had always liked that about him. She had grown tired of her own sense of purpose and her own destiny long before she arrived in Westeros, but in Westeros it seemed even more ridiculous and even more impossible to reach. She was no longer the little girl who thought that her name would cause the smallfolk to fall to their knees in gratitude to have her family back in power. She had ceased to be that little girl somewhere on her journey, though she had kept on her path because she did not know what else to do. Now, she craved that plainness of her husband. He _was_ special. He was a good man. She loved him. But he was not a thing of legend or myth. He was not unbroken or unburnt or the prince that was promised. He was Robb. He was a boy who knew how to smile and laugh, and a man who’d been hurt and had made choices that he regretted. He was her husband, and she needed him, and she loved him.

She had always believed herself special. She had always believed that there were things that the world needed from her. What had it been like for him? To grow up without that? He had not seemed to suffer for the lack of it. In fact, he was so _good_.

“Is this what everyone wanted?” she asked. She couldn’t read his expression. It was obscured by the grime and the blood on his face. “I always said I didn’t want to be queen of the ashes.”

“You aren’t,” he said. She knelt in the crater of the Red Keep and scooped up the debris. She let it run through her hands.

“What do you call this?” she asked.

“I call it the vengeful act of a dying queen. Not a kingdom.”

“It’s my kingdom now. For all the good it does me. For all the good it will do my people.”

“Daenerys,” Robb said gently, warningly. But he didn’t try to make her feel better. She loved that about him, too.

“I had dragons,” she said. “The _only_ dragons left in the world. They were gone, and _I_ brought them back. I was special. I was the last Targaryen. None of that is true anymore.”

“You will not thank me for saying something as pathetic as how special you are to at least your king, but I must say it anyway.”

She shook her head. He didn’t sound like he was trying to cheer her up. He sounded like his own head was barely above water. Still, she couldn’t stand it, and she didn’t want it.

“I am no one without them.”

“You are Daenerys Targaryen. That’s not no one.”

“I am a khaleesi without a khalasar, and I am the mother of three dead children. What do I have?”

“You have people who love you. People who believe in you. You have me.”

“That’s not nothing,” she admitted gravely, and she finally turned and looked away from him. “But I still have many more failures than I do successes.”

“Every ruler makes mistakes.”

“I think you’ll admit this is no common mistake,” she pointed out.

“It wasn’t yours,” he fired back immediately. “It was Cersei’s. It was Greyjoy’s. They’re both dead for their choices, and the horn destroyed.”

_And my dragons destroyed with them_ , she wanted to say, but she found that she could not. She looked up at the sky. The ash cloud still hovered over everything. It would rain ash down on them for days, Varys had said.

“I came here for a purpose,” she said. “To rule. To be queen. To take back my family’s seat. I’ve struggled with the _why_ of it since, and now it seems…I took control of my life, and I told myself that I was strong. I told myself that this was my purpose. _Why_. What did it matter why? It was what I needed to do.” She shook her head and looked down at her hands. They still had ash clinging to them, to her skin. It was wet in places from sweat; she had toiled for hours with the others. It was the most she had ever done for her people, she thought. She feared it was the most she would ever do. “Was this what I wanted? Was this what I was hoping for? Or did I just want the throne. _Why_?” She wanted to wipe her palms, but she didn’t. The ash was on everything. Sticking. It would not be so easily removed. She had thought to leave behind her mistakes in Meereen and start anew, but this was worse than Meereen ever was. “I led, and I let myself _be_ led, and I told myself that it was my goal. I wonder if it was the same for _her_. Did she eye the throne jealously when her husband sat upon it? Did she long for the crown? Did she get it all at last and then wonder why she had wanted it so badly in the first place? I don’t know. I shouldn’t care. She did all of this. But I wonder. I wonder if it’s the fate of rulers to realize too late that ruling is…” She trailed off. She didn’t know _what_ ruling was. She’d never ruled permanently before. Every place she had been, she had known from the start that it would be temporary. It was Westeros that was going to be hers, and it was Westeros in which she would succeed at last. She wanted to cry. She wanted to sit down in the ash and sob her eyes out in a way she hadn’t done since she lost Jorah. She wanted to curl into a ball and make the world disappear for a while, but she couldn’t. This was her mess. These were her people. They needed her.

She turned back to Robb, and she saw that his eyes were red. He was putting on a strong face for her, but he was as devastated as she was. As lost. Daenerys felt oddly cheered to see his grief written on his face. They were together. The others were with them. The others would help them. But it was the two of them who would see each other through this next storm.

Daenerys was at his side in an instant. It was impossible to say who was doing more in holding the other up. They stood in the crater of the Red Keep, in the shadow of her family’s legacy. There was still so much to do. It was unthinkable. But there was time for that later. Now would be for grief.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The songs for this chapter are Daylight Goodbye by Message to Bears and Let this Remain by Alana Henderson


	89. Robb XII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robb returns to the tents outside the ruins of the city

The numbness began to wear off faster than he would have liked.

It had started when the dragons came. They flew overhead, and try as he might Robb could not keep them in his sights for more than a second at a time. Not until they opened fire. Arcs of flame, just like when they fought the dead, except this time the flames were turned on his people. Men burned ahead of him. They burned on every side of him. The numbness set in quickly. The smell of the city and the screams of dying men didn’t reach him. Not right away. He couldn’t let them.

He had done what he could to keep himself and his men alive. He saw Jon tackle Arya away from some falling debris. He saw The Hound and Brienne shouting and sheltering with their soldiers behind stone buildings that offered some scant protection against the power of the dragonfire. Robb had followed in their example, entreating his men to hold steady, but later, after, when it was all over, his hands shook, and he found a corner in which to empty his stomach while Brienne shielded him from sight and put a hand on his back that kept him steady.

Battles were one thing. He would always remember them afterward with the taste of iron in his mouth. He would wake from nightmares. Every battle, from the Whispering Wood to the battle against the dead, had an element of sameness. Steel and sulfur and blood. He had trained all his life to fight in them, though the first time he slid his sword past a man’s armor, he’d felt a shocked kind of disbelief. A kind of incredulity. _This is what I’ve been training for_ , he had thought, horrorstruck as he remembered laughing hours with Jon and Theon, the three of them batting each other with practice swords. _This is what I’ve been playing at_.

There was an element of that every time he took a life. He’d felt the way loss could leave a person empty and hollow, and so he did not take lives easily. Every Lannister soldier he fought and killed could have been a father, a husband, a dutiful son. His enemies were the heads of their households, and Robb carried that, every time he killed someone who had no say, no power, nothing but steel and orders. He didn’t kill without consideration, but he had also become used to it, despite his best efforts.

This was different. This was a massacre.

And then the explosion. It wiped out everything for hours. Every memory. Every conscious thought. It rattled his mind, sent him reeling. He remembered watching it, and then nothing. Green fire and then an absence. He came back to himself, half-buried in debris. Brienne was screaming at him. He could see her mouth moving, but he could hear nothing but ringing, ringing, ringing. Higher pitched than any peal of any bell he’d ever heard. He remembered only green, and red, and black.

“Robb!” His hearing had come rushing back, and Brienne was hauling him to his feet. She was brushing off his arms, grasping his head to check his wound. He had shaken her off, managed to find his footing, and the work had begun.

It wasn’t a battle at all.

It was supposed to be a battle. He rode through those gates surrounded by people he loved, and he had _expected_ a battle. There was a part of him that expected it still. A sensation that something had been cut short. A feeling of tension that had yet to dissipate. A conviction that something still was on its way. All while he toiled in the rubble, he expected it, until the exhaustion seeped into him and bled the tension from his muscles completely.

Maybe they weren’t _safe_ , but there wasn’t any fighting. Everyone turned instead to helping. He worked for hours under the ash-dimmed sun, pulling people from the wreckage and helping them get to Sam and the growing field of medical tents outside the city. He could not say later what he had even done. Only that there had been work to do, and he had done it.

Later, he found Daenerys in the ruins of the Red Keep, and later he held her as they both wept for the enormity of what faced them. Robb had been dealt harsher blows before. Had been nearly destroyed by them but fought his way back. He knew that when this day was over, and the sun came up again, he would be more ready to move forward, but he wasn’t ready yet.

* * *

He was persuaded by Brienne to go back up and rest in the tent that had been set aside for he and Daenerys.

“You took a hard hit,” she said, pushing back his hair again to look at the bloody cut on his head. “You should have Sam take a look at it.”

“Sam’s busy,” Robb replied. He could tell that Brienne wanted to argue, but she only sighed, and nodded.

“Then rest,” she said. “Your wife needs you.”

Daenerys _did_ look lost, gazing around at the destruction. He knew that she would not want to hide her face away from what had happened, but he also knew that there was a sharp difference between looking at something and becoming absorbed by it. She would want to take responsibility, but she would drive herself to despair if she stayed in the ruins for long. He knew Brienne was right.

They made their way back up to the tents on a borrowed horse. Robb saw Jon and Arya briefly. He saw Davos. He saw Tyrion helping Grey Worm lift an injured Unsullied man into a stretcher. The man was talking, awake. Alive. Robb savored that, even on a man he didn’t know. Signs of life. He saw armor crushed and dented, house sigils obscured by blood or burnt off. He heard screams and moans of pain. He heard Sam’s cheerful voice straining at the edges as he shouted for more help, more assistance, more bandages.

He and Daenerys rode past the tents of the injured, and they headed for the tents that had been set up for he and his family. The one for he and Daenerys was the largest. Robb wanted to tear it down. Soft pillows and blankets were laid out on their bed. A soft rug beneath their feet. Everything clean and untouched by death. It was the same tent Daenerys had used all the way north from Dragonstone, and Robb had found it pleasant, once. Now it seemed obscene. He swallowed back an unexpected rage, and he turned to look at his wife, and he saw her gazing at the tub in the center. Her handmaidens had filled it with water that steamed. There were flower petals floating in it. The whole tent smelled of them. Daenerys turned away from it, and she looked like _she_ might need to empty her stomach, too.

“I didn’t want this,” she said. He thought of saying something dry, sarcastic. _The bath_? he would ask, knowing very well that it wasn’t the bath she was speaking of. The thought made him exhausted. He yanked at the straps of his armor instead. Daenerys was silent behind him. He closed his eyes and breathed and thought of better things. The godswood at Winterfell. He and Jon and Theon playing at knights as the snow fell around them. Sansa and Arya laughing together. They were children who knew nothing of war.

He understood now his mother’s horror when he called his banners. He understood now why she had been so reluctant to let him face it. The world was filled with moments like this. As a boy, he’d been desperate to grow up and do something amazing. Something from the tales.

What would the tales tell about this day?

It was easy to imagine some foolish boy, centuries from now, playing in the wood with his siblings and friends, doling out roles to one another. _You be the Kingslayer and I’ll be the Young Wolf_. Two brothers would be the dragons, rolling and clawing at each other. A savage little sister who looked like Arya would yell _kaboom_ , and shriek as the dragon brothers pretended to explode into flame. Robb could see it. He could remember the way the dragons tore at each other above the city, the way they slammed into buildings and rained death on the people below.

“Robb,” Daenerys said, close behind him, and he realized that he had frozen in place, unmoving.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He turned to look at her, and she put her hand on his arm.

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“We both do,” he said, and she nodded. She pulled back. She looked at the bathwater, her hands trembling as she folded them over each other. Fidgeting restlessly with her fingers.

“It’s a poison,” she said. She looked back at him. “Power. I used to think it was the people who held it. I used to think that only poisonous people had the will to reach for it, and that was why they took it. I used to think that I would be different.” Her face crumbled.

“You are,” he said.

“I want to believe that’s true, but do you know what I felt? When I saw my dragons dying, I thought only of them. And when I saw that the Red Keep was gone, I thought of my throne. And then I thought: _I’ve won._ ” She pulled away when he tried to reach for her. She shook her head. Her hair was dishevelled, falling out of her braid, and she pulled it back angrily, behind her ear. Her hands were shaking.

“Daenerys,” he said, and she shook her head.

“It was all I wanted for years. All I cared about. I wanted to make things better. I wanted to save people. But those were the things I told myself, weren’t they? At my core, I just wanted to win. I wanted power.”

“So that you could change things.”

“By changing the queen who sits on the same throne? Wearing the same crown upon her head?”

Robb sighed, and he thought about how to answer as he hung up his armor.

“The one who rules can make an awful lot of changes. Of course it matters who sits on the throne. You and Cersei…you will be a very different sort of queen.”

“And perhaps the one who rules after me will see it fit to undo all the changes I _do_ make. If there won’t be any children, how will we choose who will be next to rule? And what if we choose incorrectly? What if my heir is as mad as Cersei? Even _my_ child could be mad. And if we choose one of Jon’s children, perhaps _they_ will be mad as well. You know what they say about my house, and you know what happened to my father. And look at Joffrey Baratheon. He didn’t need to be _mad_ to be a terrible king. What if my heir is Joffrey come again? Everything we’ve fought for, every bit of good we will do, it could all be undone by a single terrible king.”

“Every ruler struggles with these questions,” Robb reminded her.

“I never wanted to be every ruler. I just never thought about what that meant.” She gripped the edge of the tub and looked down into the water. “If we’re going to make a change, I want to change all of it.” The deadened, haunted, lost quality had left her voice, and Robb felt relief and wariness at once. She was back. Daenerys. His wife. Her determination and fire made cool and tempered by what had happened. Made all the stronger for it, too.

“Then we change all of it,” he said. She eyed him for a moment, perhaps to judge if he was serious. Then she smiled, and it was nearly blinding. “What did you have in mind?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m only a young girl.” He rolled his eyes. “Who knows nothing of ruling.”

“Of course.”

“But a single person on a throne doling out proclamations and punishments can’t be the _best_ that we can do. We came together as a people to defeat our enemies. We should come together as a people to rebuild. To make things better, not keep things exactly as they were for centuries under my family.”

Robb smiled at her, and he could imagine it. Change. He was no stranger to people saying that certain things _just weren’t done_. He was no stranger to thinking that there had to be a better way.

The nobility was in shambles. The capital city was in ruins. It was a time for rebuilding, but there was nothing that said that they couldn’t build something better in place of what Kings Landing had represented for generations.

“I’m with you,” he said, and she smiled, and the tent flap opened. He turned to tell them off, but it was Sansa who stood in the doorway, looking radiant, her eyes shining with happy tears.

* * *

Jaime was crouched in front of Bran’s chair, talking to him. Robb could only see the back of his head. But Bran…

Robb could see Bran’s expression.

He could see that Bran was smiling. He could see that Bran rolled his eyes. He could see that Bran lifted his hands to gesture, directing Jaime’s attention to something in the city of tents below. His other hand unthinkingly touched Jaime’s shoulder. Little things, little movements that The Three Eyed Raven never bothered with.

_He’s Bran again_ , Sansa had said, and Robb hadn’t known exactly if he could believe her. What did it mean that he was _Bran_ again? Robb hadn’t seen Bran, true Bran, in years, and Sansa hadn’t seen him in even longer. How would she know? How would any of them? But even seeing him from a distance, Robb knew she was right.

Bran was Bran again. Bran the boy.

He looked up and met Robb’s eyes, and his expression shone just like Sansa’s had when she came into the tent. Robb put on a burst of speed. Jaime stood and moved away, wiping at his eyes with his remaining hand. Robb went to one knee before his brother, and he cupped his face in both hands. Bran’s nose wrinkled.

“You couldn’t have bathed, first?” he asked, and Robb laughed through the tears that bubbled up and clogged his throat. He hugged Bran, ignored his brother’s indignant squawk, and Bran reluctantly hugged him in return.

“We’re going to find Jon and Arya,” Sansa said, bowing briefly over both of them and hugging them together. She and Jaime left, riding down to the city on Jaime’s horse. Bran watched them go, and he smiled at Robb.

They were alone. Tyrion Lannister lurked vaguely nearby, plainly wanting to speak to Bran, but Daenerys caught his attention, and gave Robb a knowing look as she got her Hand to follow her. Robb could not stop looking at Bran’s face. He was so much older, and yet he looked young again without the weight behind his eyes that being the Three-Eyed Raven had given him.

“What happened?” he asked. “How…?” Bran’s expression fell, and he breathed deeply.

“I tried to save the city. I warged into Drogon, and I _tried_. But I couldn’t stop it. I felt like…like I was on top of a very tall tower, and the Three-Eyed Raven pushed me out, just before the flames. He said it was his time. When I hit the ground, I woke up, and I was just me again.”

Robb shook his head, and he hugged Bran again. He hated to hear Bran speak with that confused, addled tone. It must have been impossible to describe, and Robb felt like he had failed. Like he should have done something years ago to protect his brother.

“I’m so glad you’re all right,” he said.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t do more.”

“Don’t. Don’t say that. You did more than enough, Bran. Thank you.”

Bran shook his head, but hugged Robb back fiercely.

“I saw you,” he said into Robb’s shoulder. “So many times. I thought you were dead, but I’d dream, and you’d be there. I tried to talk to you.”

“I saw you too,” Robb answered. He pulled back to look at Bran. There were tears still in his own eyes, but not in Bran’s. Bran just looked tired. Happy, giddy, guilty. So many human things at once. Robb felt his throat clogging again.

“Sometimes you’d hear me, I thought. You’d look for me in the fog. But it didn’t really feel like you. Not really.”

“I know. I don’t think it really was.”

“I don’t think it was really _me_ , either. It didn’t feel like me.” Bran grinned a bit. “But we both feel like ourselves, now.”

Robb swallowed back the rising tears, knowing that there were so many eyes on him. Knowing that he was going to have to pull himself together and be a king again, not just an older brother who had made so many mistakes. Still, he needed this. This last moment.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t come back. I’m sorry you were left all alone at Winterfell. I’m sorry…”

“Don’t, Robb,” Bran said. His hand squeezed Robb’s shoulder, just as it had earlier done to Jaime Lannister. Bran smiled. “It had to happen exactly like this. I understand that now.”

“Arya’s going to kill you if you keep talking like that even now that you’re back,” Robb managed, and Bran laughed loudly, delightedly, and it made Robb weak with relief. Every sign that Bran was Bran again.

“I might do it just because it’ll make her mad. But I’m being serious. It wasn’t all him, you know. The Three Eyed Raven. I was in there too. I learned a lot from him. The Night King was the main thing. The most important thing. But the Three Eyed Raven saw so much. He learned a lot in all that time he was trying to save us. He didn’t care as much about the after part, but _I_ did, and I made him care, too. We have a chance now because of him.”

“A chance to make it better,” Robb said, understanding. Feeling the weight of the determination he had seen in Daenerys, and feeling the boyish optimism that was in Bran’s smile.

“A chance to make it better,” Bran agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song for this chapter is Steady Love by Evergreen


	90. Jon X

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon recovers

The worst thing about the broken arm was Arya, who mocked Jon relentlessly about it for ages after it happened. When they walked among the dead. When they sifted through the ashes and the ruins of the buildings that had crumbled to try and find any living in the rubble. When they saw the crater that had been the Red Keep, and when they were told that both of the dragons were dead. Arya was relentless, savage in her mockery because it was either mockery or grief. Jon understood why she made the choice she did, and he bore it.

Gendry was off in a medical tent, having his injured shoulder and leg cleaned and stitched, and Jon knew that she was worried, but he also knew that she would kill him if he tried to talk about it.

Sansa found them somehow, though they were both covered in debris and sweat and dirt and looked just as unrecognizable as anyone else. She came riding into the city on the back of Jaime Lannister’s horse, the two of them appearing out of the ash that flurried like fog around everything. Jon thought at first that maybe the pain had finally gotten to him, but no, they were actually there. Jaime helped her down, and then Sansa raced to them and enfolded he and Arya both in hugs. She wept openly, in a way she so rarely did. But then she pulled back, and she was smiling at them. Confused and dazed and radiant and a hundred things at once. She could hardly contain her gladness, even as horror and grief overwhelmed her, and Jon understood it.

“You’ve lost it,” Arya remarked, but Sansa only smiled wider.

“Bran,” she said. “He’s Bran again.”

Arya demanded answers, but Sansa couldn’t say anything except _he’s Bran_ and _you’ll see_ and _come on, back to the tents!_ Jaime had wandered off into the wreckage in a daze, so Arya commandeered his horse, pulling Sansa up behind her.

“Jon broke his arm overreacting and trying to push me out of danger,” she said as she did. “So he’ll have to go to Sam, first.” Sansa looked at him with alarm, and Jon glared at Arya for it. He’d been doing such a good job hiding it from Sansa, even hugging her around the pain. His anger couldn’t last long, though. Bran was Bran. Bran was Bran again, for the first time since Jon left him sleeping at Winterfell, with Catelyn watching disdainfully from his bedside.

“Go on,” he said, when Sansa seemed likely to dismount again to hover over him. Her care always made him feel…well. Something he’d never felt before. Softness and warmth and safety. He longed to allow himself to fall into it, to absorb it, to forget everything else and allow her to take some of the burden off himself, but he couldn’t. He would break down if she showed him any more softness than she already had, and he couldn’t afford it yet. She seemed to understand. She nodded.

“We’re up by Robb’s tent,” she said gently. “You can’t miss it.”

“I’ll find you,” he said, and another pleasant smile lighted across Sansa’s face before she nodded and squeezed Arya’s waist. Arya wheeled the horse around on her signal and gave Jon a cheeky little grin as they rode back through the ruined streets. Jon watched them go. Some sense of ease had settled over him, and it made him feel lighter. His arm throbbed and his eyes burned from the ash all around them, and his throat had been clogged already with grief, but he could feel a light anyway. Something he could look towards. Hope.

He made his way to Sam, got himself a splint and a bunch of warnings about resting his arm until it was fully healed. Sam was stern and annoyed and gruff and so very _Sam_ about it all, and it brought Jon even more back to himself. Waking up from the fog of pain and grief he had been in for hours.

After setting his arm, Sam left him alone for a bit, and Jon lay there on his cot and stared at the ceiling and allowed himself to drift. He wanted to get up and go find Bran. He wanted to see him again. He wanted to see Sansa, and Robb, and Arya, and all the rest. He felt like he was still in the city. Still pressed up against that building, craning his neck to try and see the dragon overhead. After the first few blasts of flame, it was impossible to see anything more than a few feet above the buildings, because the ash and dust from the collapsing buildings was everywhere. Smoke and flame. He remembered being buried beneath those men during the Battle of the Bastards. Suffocating. Gasping for breath. Dying _again_. Failing _again_.

He took a deep breath, and his ribs ached with it, but it was a pleasant enough ache that he welcomed, because it tethered him. He’d survived that battle, and he’d survived against the dead, and he had survived in Kings Landing, too. He was lucky. Not everyone was.

He found a basin of mostly clean water outside the tent, and he crouched before it and scooped what he could over his head with his unbroken arm. The water was warmer than he would have liked, but it woke him up a bit all the same. He looked back down at the city, back down at what remained, and already it looked less dire than it had felt when he was standing inside it. So many buildings. So many dead. And yet the living were working, hauling bodies from the rubble. He saw Brienne, her blue armor and her blonde hair shining against the rest. She was shouting orders and helping The Hound lift a sizable chunk of rock that allowed a family of three to scramble out from where they had been trapped. He saw men and women carrying litters of the wounded up the hill, dropping them off in cots and tents, and then going right back into the city again. He saw Flea Bottom peasants and high-born men in Lannister and Stark and Tully colors working together. Putting up tents and unfolding cots and stripping blankets from beds to be washed and replaced with cleaner linens for the next wave of the wounded.

He could breathe again. He closed his eyes and let the water drip down the side of his face. It wasn’t over. Not everything had been lost. He felt hope again, and he knew he was ready. He could face his family again.

* * *

He found Robb’s tent easily, just as Sansa had said he would, and he could see the small crowd that had gathered around Bran. Sansa was there, tall above everyone else. Daenerys was standing beside her, the two women arm-in-arm. Robb was standing a little ways off. He looked as worn down and guilty as Jon felt, but he was smiling softly. Tyrion and Varys were nearby, and Gilly and little Sam were on their way back down after having said their hellos. It was a small spot of positivity among the chaos, and Jon knew that it couldn’t last long, but he didn’t care. Seeing Bran again gave him a much-needed burst of energy, and he was quickly among them. Sansa and Daenerys both smiled at him. Robb clasped him on the shoulder. Bran hadn’t noticed his approach yet; he was swatting Arya away as she leaned in closer to look in his eyes, in the middle of joking about his powers.

“ _Arya_ , stop,” Bran snapped, half-laughing, when Arya poked at his forehead, and Arya swooped down and hugged him around the neck, and Bran locked eyes with Jon over her shoulder.

When it happened, Bran’s eyes lit up in a way that Jon had nearly forgotten. He was still a man now, Bran. Still larger and unfamiliar and still so different from the little boy he used to be. But that mischievous look in his eyes, that brightness of childhood and years past. Jon could see _Bran_ again, even before Bran spoke a word.

Arya moved aside for him, giddy and young-looking herself, and Jon almost felt like they were in Winterfell again. Back at home, back before everything had happened. He knelt down beside Bran’s chair, and Bran grinned at him, and he was made younger again, smaller again. He was a little boy who climbed too much and never wanted to be left behind by his big brothers. Happy tears glimmered in his eyes, and there was so much emotion in them. So much more than had been in them for the past moons. Jon felt his own eyes brimming in response.

He bent and hugged Bran, and he could hear Bran’s muffled cries against his shoulder. He didn’t feel any shame in doing the same.

* * *

His reunion with Bran and the quiet, private conversation that followed was a good reprieve from Arya’s taunts, but once she got it into her head to bully him into his tent, she picked back up on the broken arm, and she would not let him have peace.

“I was _fine_ ,” she kept saying. “I was nowhere _near_ the debris. You actually knocked me _closer_ to it, you lunatic.”

To his embarrassment, she was probably right. He’d panicked when he saw the rocks flying towards them, and he had tackled Arya out of the way, breaking his arm when he slammed it against a stone pillar and making an ass out of himself for no reason. Of everyone in their party, he was the one with the most grievous injury from the dragonfire; there were many bruised heads and scrapes and cuts and some minor burns, but they had gotten off easy compared to the Iron Bank's mercenary army and the Dothraki who followed them. All told, they had _all_ gotten lucky. The people of the city who had lived in the shadow of the Red Keep, most of them were ash. The ones who lived a bit further were the ones who suffered: burns and crush injuries rather than the quick deaths that those in the keep and surrounding neighborhoods had been granted. Of the soldiers, it seemed to Jon that the Iron Bank army must have borne the brunt of the burning and injuries, though the Unsullied and northern fighters must have taken several hits from the dragons. Many of the people on Yara’s ships had been killed, and for hours Jon assumed that Theon and his sister had been among them, but word spread quickly of Theon haunting the coastline, pulling out the men he could from the wreckage and helping Sam tend to them in the tents. Word spread even _more_ quickly about Yara washing up on the rocky shore, clutching her uncle’s hacked-off head by its hair. Jon spotted her once, leaning heavily on a pretty, well-dressed girl with curly brown hair. She’d abandoned her grisly trophy somewhere in favor of keeping her arm around the girl, who helped her to a medical tent with a few coy smiles and an obviously returned interest.

Jon didn’t feel lucky yet, though he knew it was ridiculous to feel anything but. Everyone he loved had survived the horrors. There would be rebuilding aplenty to do, but he had faith that they would be able to do it. _Lucky_ was the only word that described it, and yet all Jon could feel was tired, and grieved, and _guilty_. Guilty for what? He wasn’t sure. For surviving? For not making different choices? For not letting Arya go in and kill Cersei on her own? Maybe there was even some guilt for not sharing his aunt’s grief for the dragons. Or for experiencing such sharp joy to see Bran again while all around him people suffered and bled and mourned _their_ loved ones. 

Whenever he had a moment of peace. Whenever he closed his eyes. He could see the shadow of the dragons as they tore over the city. He could feel the heat of their flames on his face.

He could not forget it. He had feared the dragons even when they fought above him against the dead. He had feared their flames and their claws. He had understood suddenly why people were so afraid of Ghost even if they trusted _him_. It was one thing to trust the person who had control of such deadly creatures, but it was much harder to trust that the creatures themselves had been sufficiently tamed, and he could never stop seeing them as weapons above all else. Weapons that could not be taken down or stood against.

He had been glad the dragons were on their side, and worried about what would happen if they ever _weren’t_ , and that worst had come to pass.

Bran had saved them all by taking control of Drogon when he did. He had tried to save the city. He had tried to keep the dragons from causing more harm than they already had. He claimed to remember everything from his time as the Three Eyed Raven, and he spoke of the raven’s insistence that he would be needed against Cersei if the realm was going to heal. He had been almost shy about it, not really knowing how to talk about the creature that he had merged with for moons, especially now that the creature was gone, with no signs of returning. He had been quiet, too, with several glances in the direction of Daenerys, and Jon thought he understood.

No battlefield, no reign, could be balanced as long as the dragons lived.

* * *

Arya bullied him back into his tent, and then she mocked him some more about his unnecessary attempted heroics, and then she flared up when he tried to mock her about her obvious avoidance of her wounded Gendry. Jon was glad when Sansa entered the tent to speak to him. Glad for a few reasons, but mostly glad that Arya left off and decided to make herself scarce.

The sisters had a brief, wordless exchange in the doorway that made Arya roll her eyes and stomp off like she was annoyed, though she couldn’t hide her grin. Sansa’s smile was smaller, less full, but no less real. Jon felt his heart warm slowly at the sight. He was glad that the newfound peace between the sisters seemed likely to hold even now that the wars were done. They had been so solid since Winterfell, always looking out for each other. It was a relief. He had been worried they would make him choose. Not intentionally, not out loud, but with their actions.

“She never takes care of herself,” Sansa said in explanation for the exchange with Arya. She sat on the edge of Jon’s cot, taking in the sight of his arm and the bruises that had probably begun to form on his face. Jon intended to listen to Sam and get a few hours of rest, but he was already itching to go out and help some more. Sift through the rubble as best he could with his broken arm. Tend to the wounded or even just stand back and shout orders to keep everyone organized. _Anything._ Sansa could sense his restlessness, and she pushed his curls back from his face with a gentleness that calmed him a bit. “I could say the same thing about you, apparently. I heard what you did. Very brave.”

“Shut up,” he said, seeing the amusement in her eyes that she tried to hide with her straight expression. “I’ve already been hearing enough of it from Arya.”

“And now you’ll be hearing it from me,” she replied primly. Her fingers were cool against the heated skin of his forehead, and he was happy she had come. As embarrassed as he was to have injured himself so spectacularly, he was glad to have this moment to themselves. “It really was brave. I wasn’t just mocking you.”

“I know,” he said, because he did. Sansa often hid real feelings beneath her snarkiest words.

“I would have been furious if you’d died, though,” she continued, and Jon allowed a crooked smile.

“I know,” he said again. “But if we're speaking of taking care of ourselves…”

“Yes,” Sansa admitted, of course knowing exactly what he was going to say. “I haven’t been doing the best job of it either. Robb and Daenerys wanted to speak with me about their plans for the future. They want to form a new style of governing, and they want me to help.” She smiled, proud but tired. She rolled her eyes a bit. “Then I went to Sam to ask _him_ to help, too, and he wound up keeping me for stitching for a while.”

He could see the dried blood under her fingernails, though she had clearly scrubbed her hands nearly raw before coming here. He felt pride, even as he wished she had been granted more time to rest. He wasn’t surprised she hadn’t sought it out yet; her talent for sewing had saved many lives during the Long Night. Of course she wanted to help again. He knew her, and he knew that she hated to feel helpless. Most people did, but she’d had so much of it in her life. It was no wonder she fought back against it.

“You need rest,” he said. He remembered during the fighting against the dead, when she told him the same thing. He had been erratic, tired and weak and desperate to return to the battlefield because it seemed like that was what he had to do. What he had been brought back to life for.

She smiled at him, because she remembered, but it trembled on her face.

“There’s no time,” she said.

“You took the time to come see me,” he pointed out. Her smile grew, got almost sheepish in the way it showed her pleasure. So soon after nearly dying, everything about her seemed wondrous. Uncommonly wonderful, like she was some fairy creature from an Old Nan tale. Something too perfect to be human. He had felt the same thing when he saw her at Castle Black for the first time. The way she stood tall and terrified in the courtyard, turning to look for him and freezing when she saw him. He had frozen, too. Maybe that was when it started, that spreading feeling of confusion and fear turning to a deep relief when he realized it was _her_ and that she was _okay_. That feeling had never truly left him. Even now, even after being in her presence for moons, he would sometimes look at her and be so _surprised_ by it. A force of something that would hit him in the chest and make him feel like he was swimming. Maybe that was all love was. The constant surprise of seeing someone and feeling like everything was going to get better just by the fact of them being with you.

“I did take the time,” she said. She was wilted a bit, her brightness dimmed by her exhaustion and grief and the events of the day. But she continued on, and he loved her for that, too, along with everything else. She wanted to make him smile. She touched his hair again. She said, “if you’d rather I go elsewhere…”

He _did_ smile, because she wanted him to, and because he could not help it.

“Don’t you dare,” he replied. “Lay down, at least. Please.”

He held open his uninjured arm, and Sansa hesitated. She glanced towards the flap of the tent, but Jon found he didn’t care. Robb had already given them his blessing. Arya would be gone for a while yet, hopefully to harass Gendry so she could stop worrying about him. Bran would probably be stuck talking to Tyrion Lannister for at least the next week. Anyone else could fuck off. He’d been ordered to rest, after all, and that was exactly what he meant to do. Sansa seemed to come to the same conclusion, and she pulled herself up into the bed, awkward and stiff in a formal way that made him think of how she had been as a girl, always afraid to muss her fresh-braided hair or fine dresses. Except it was _him_ she was being so careful of now, treating him gingerly in a way that made the lump in his throat grow again. When she had found a comfortable spot beside him, she lay her head on his chest. Her arm was hesitant, careful, as if she was trying to embrace him without him noticing. It slid across his stomach and curled around his side. He allowed a contented sigh that made her smile sadly at him.

It was the most comfortable he had felt in days. Weeks, perhaps. Still, he could not rest. Not fully. And he could feel from the tension with which Sansa held herself that she felt the same.

“How many dead?” he asked.

“I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure,” she said. “The Golden Company and anyone who fought for Cersei. Anyone who was within the Red Keep, or still close enough to it to get the worst of the wildfire. Their bodies are gone. We'll never know how many were left in the city, but we know from the survivors and from Arya that there were a lot of them. Nearly half of the army the Iron Bank hired were killed, and more injured might join them by the morning. Some of the Dothraki, though they’re not as bad off. More injured than dead. A good bit of the men from Highgarden were killed. A swath of men from the Vale took damage when the dragon hit them, along with our people and some of The Unsullied. Missandei said a few of the Unsullied under the city took some injuries when the ceilings began to collapse, but none of them are unaccounted for. Total, we have no idea. Countless.”

“Countless,” Jon mused. It had an awful sound to it. So many dead that they would never know the number. _Countless._

“And the last dragons,” Sansa finished.

Jon tried to care about the dragons. He had been trying since he heard they were dead. They had been his family’s legacy. His true house's legacy. He was the heir to the throne, Rhaegar's legitimate son; he should have felt _something_ for the fact that the dragons had returned to life only to die out again. Just like his house: a queen who claimed she could not have children and an heir that wanted nothing to do with his name. He tried to care. He tried to feel sorry.

“Good,” he found himself saying. Whispered low, though they were alone in the tent. Sansa nodded minutely.

“Mm,” she said, just as quietly. “I would never say so to Daenerys. I know she thought of them as her children, and I know she will grieve for them. I am sorry for that. But…I don’t know what good could have come of them after the wars. I don’t know what they would have done except frighten people. Maybe that would have been a part of it. Keeping the peace through fear. But I’m glad they’re gone. I know it’s awful, but I feel safer now.”

“It’s not awful,” he assured her gently. He looked down at her and saw that she looked guilty. He didn’t want that. Sansa always seemed to look guilty for one thing or another, just like Robb. Just like him. “I keep thinking that I should care,” he admitted quietly. “They were part of me. But I suppose I’ll never be a dragon. I’m too much wolf.”

“That’s right. The gods gave you a direwolf pup just like the rest of us. Not a stupid dragon.”

Jon laughed, and he saw the way she was looking at him, all amused adoration, and so he kissed her. She smiled into the kiss. Sleepily satisfied.

He had resisted being legitimized before, whenever Robb or Sansa offered after his parentage was revealed. It felt like a lie, then. A covering up of the truth. It didn’t feel like that anymore. It felt like he had been presented a choice. Two paths to the future. Someone asking him who it was that he wanted to be.

_A Stark_ was the answer. It had always _been_ the answer. He knew that Daenerys would be disappointed, and he knew that they would need to discuss, eventually, what it meant for the future of the Targaryen house. But it wasn’t _eventually_ yet.

He didn’t want Sansa to marry a bastard. He wanted Sansa to marry Jon Stark of Winterfell. Her cousin. Her protector. Her _friend_. Not a brother any longer, but a man who met her at Castle Black and loved her so quickly that it took quite a long time for him to realize that that was what it was.

“I want to be Jon Stark,” he said.

“Good,” Sansa breathed. She was smiling at him. “I thought you might.”

“It was all I ever wanted, once.” Even safe in this tent together, it felt so foolish to admit it. “I thought I would die in this battle, because otherwise…it all seemed too good to be real. You. My name. The future I always wanted but never thought I’d have. It seems like it must have some catch. I thought that…there had to be a reason I was brought back to life. And I was so sure that it wouldn’t be for very long. And then the Night King was dead, and I was still alive, and I think for every moment after that I’ve been waiting for it.”

For death to reclaim him. For the gift to be taken back. Melisandre wasn’t around anymore to bring him back to life, and whatever it was that she thought he was needed for, his moment had come and passed, and he was only Jon again. Not someone needed for any great purpose. Just a boy who thought he was a bastard and grew up to be prince of a realm he had no interest in ruling. It wasn’t so bad a thing, to see the future stretched out ahead of him instead of just the blankness he usually saw. But it was _strange_ , all the same.

“I know,” Sansa admitted quietly. “I thought the same thing. Everything has been going so right for us.”

“We’ve learned not to trust that.”

“We have.” Her arm tightened on him, and he could see the deep breath she took, grounding herself against him. “I’ve never been more afraid than I was when I saw the flames. I didn’t know where you were in the city, but I knew you could be anywhere, and…I think I expected Cersei to win for such a long time. It seemed impossible that she could die without taking revenge.”

He understood. He felt the same when the Night King died. Not by his hand, and not after killing him. He died without Jon’s blade in him, and he left Jon alive. Jon had been so consumed by fear of him, and so consumed by the need to kill him, and the fact that the Night King’s death had not been connected to him in any way had thrown him. Made him feel tetherless. Cersei had maybe not been quite as fearsome as the Night King, but she was to Sansa.

“She did, though,” Jon said. He kissed her forehead gently. Sansa’s eyes were closing, and he hoped that she would sleep. “She died, and she’s gone. She’ll never hurt you again. Bran saved us all, and the rest of us are still here, and we'll keep going. You survived, and she didn’t.”

Sansa smiled slightly. She didn’t open her eyes.

“We survived,” she said, content at last. The tension leaving her. “And everyone who tried to hurt us is dead.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song for this chapter is We Rule the World by Phil Lober
> 
> also, I need to point out for anyone who missed it that that is indeed Cersei's sidepiece Wylla helping Yara to the medical tent, and of COURSE they're gonna bang


	91. Jaime XII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime says goodbye to his sister.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually did it! The final chapter! Thank you to everyone who read and commented. I'll be going back and reading comments now, and replying to a few of them, but I've let my inbox grow quite a bit, so it might take a while! I cannot tell you how relieved I am to have it done. 
> 
> I originally had 95 chapters planned, but I cut the final few out after they seemed to stretch out for too long. This way seemed cleaner, with an open ending for people to imagine whatever they want. I'll probably make a post on tumblr describing the chapters I cut out some time tomorrow, just for clarity, but they got very Return of the King, and I felt like a swifter end would be better. Plus, it kind of felt right to end this story on a Jaime chapter. 
> 
> I would say that the last four chapters really serve as a kind of epilogue! I have my own ideas about where the characters would go from here, and I would be willing to chat about them and maybe write a few things up if inspiration ever struck me, but for now I'm happy to see this story finished! I knew I'd do it, because I refused to let myself NOT do it, but I'm still so jazzed that it's finally done. I can't say it was always a PLEASANT experience, but I am super proud of myself, and I hope in the end you all enjoyed it :)

Tyrion was the one who found him, standing in the rubble. Jaime did not know how long he had been missing from the rescue efforts, but he imagined it was quite a while. The cloud of ash and smoke over the city made the sunlight seem dampened hours ago, but it seemed lower now, and the whole of the city was awash in this sickening gray-green half-light. It made him think of Aerys.

All of it made him think of Aerys. Aerys and Cersei, merging together, Cersei’s lips saying _burn them all_. Her memory had been the only thing he could cling to in those days, when he was too young and afraid to stand against the king until it was almost too late. Cersei’s memory, her softness and her smiles and her shrieking laugh when they were children and they were everything to each other. Now _she_ was the monster, his golden salvation turned to green, liquid fire. Killing the people he had once saved. His finest act.

His finest act undone by his greatest failure.

He hadn’t been able to save them this time. He hadn’t been able to save _her_ , either. He hadn’t saved her from her husband’s pawing or bruises or the indignities of his wandering eye. He hadn’t saved her from her own ambition or her hatred or her fear. He hadn’t saved her from himself, nor from the damage he had done to her. He had enabled her. Followed her. Hated her. Loved her. And in the end, he had done nothing but fail her. Over and over. Just like anybody else.

And she had failed him.

It was the first time the thought ever occurred to him. It made him want to howl with laughter, but he didn’t have the energy.

She had failed him.

_She_ had failed _him_.

Why had he never allowed that before? Why had he never even _thought_ she could fail him? He had fought for her. Loved her. Craved her. Needed her. For years and years, she was the only one that mattered to him enough to rouse him to action no matter _what_ she asked. For Tyrion, he would say that he would do anything, but there were limits there that never existed for Cersei, because Cersei was what mattered. He had given her so much, and she had given him what she could. But it was never enough.

It wasn’t easy for her. It wasn’t easy for her to show the weakness that she believed love to be. He knew that. He understood her. But she had failed him. She had failed him by doing _this_. She had failed him by never asking him why he killed the king. She had failed him by never once touching his stump, never once kissing it, never affirming that she still loved him even though he was no longer whole.

She had failed him by ignoring his insights into the battles she insisted she had to fight alone. She had failed him by assuming that he was jealously eyeing the throne when, even after everything, his chief desire had been to see her _safe_. She had failed him by assuming he wanted her for the same reasons other men did. Assuming that it was her beauty that drew him and assuming that when it faded, she would no longer have power over him.

He was no longer the same man who had loved her with a passion that blinded him and destroyed him and nearly killed him. That man died in the field outside Highgarden, and it was better for him that that man stay dead. But that man’s memories echoed through him all the same, and he could remember now, and see much more clearly than he once had.

He was so used to feeling like a failure to the people he loved that he never would have considered that they could fail him. That he could be disappointed with Cersei as well as angry. That he could wish for more, _expect_ more, even _deserve_ more.

_She failed me. She failed me. She failed me_.

He couldn’t stop thinking it once it was there. It drowned out the part of him that had been thinking _I failed_ since the explosion. It drowned out the despair and the horror and the self-hatred that had always been there. _She failed me_.

Not always. There had been a time when he _hadn’t_ hated himself, right? There must have been. Before his father berated him for his poor reading skills and wrote him off as a dullard. Before Cersei proved he would do anything for her, no matter how terrible. Before he realized that he would never be able to do enough for Tyrion, not as long as he still catered to Cersei. There must have been a time when Jaime thought he was worth something, but he couldn’t remember it.

When Tyrion found him, Jaime didn’t know how long he had been standing alone in the crater. He had searched for Brienne, first, when he left Sansa with Jon and Arya. He found her helping the wounded, and she had pulled him into a bruising kiss, and he had been so _relieved._ But there was little time for that. He and Brienne had worked together for an hour or more, but eventually they were separated, and Jaime knew what he had to do.

He went to the pit of the Red Keep with the intention of finding something, anything, some sign of his sister. Some constant need for self-punishment telling him that he had to see that she was dead, that she hadn’t suffered or lingered too long. It was impossible to say where the throne room would have been, because everything was gone. He’d spent most of his adult life in the Red Keep, and he knew its halls and its secrets as well as anyone, but there was nothing left to know but rubble now, and there was nothing of his sister’s body left to find. To hold and touch and bury and grieve and hate and love. He didn’t know _what_ his reaction would be, but now he had been robbed of even that. _She_ had robbed him of it. She had failed him.

His eyes lit on some things. Bricks. Stones. Pieces of colorful tile that had survived the flames. Nothing human. Nothing of fabric or hair or even the metal of the melted swords of the throne. Nothing was left of any consequence. He held a piece of green tile in his hand for a while, turning it over, brushing it off. He hardly thought about it. Just picked it up and held it, because he needed to hold _something_ , and there was nothing else.

He was so _angry_.

He was standing in a circle of his own Lannister armor when Tyrion found him. He had stripped it off himself, dropping it to the ground at his feet. The golden lion’s heads he had so proudly polished once. The colors he loved. He didn’t want to wear them anymore. He had had enough of it, and he couldn’t stand to wear them any longer. It was some madness that stole over him and made him tear it off, leaving him in only his softer clothing beneath. No more wars. No more death. It was all he was made for, all he had ever known, but he _couldn’t_.

“Jaime,” Tyrion said. “There you are. I’m sorry.”

He sounded sorry. He sounded lost. He sounded _wounded_. When Jaime turned and looked at him, he could see that Tyrion’s face reflected all of that at once. Jaime once would have ached to make that voice happier, but he found he didn’t have the energy anymore. He was old and tired and broken after so many losses. He had given everything to save the city once, and then he had stood by when the city was destroyed anyway. Because of her. Because of Cersei. What had he done? He had taken too long. He had supported his family. He had followed his family. He had failed his family, and they had failed him. He had warned them, hadn’t he? He warned them about wildfire, and he warned them about Cersei, and he had warned _Cersei_ about the dragons and about the price of failure. None of it had mattered. None of it, in the end, had made any difference.

They didn’t listen. No one ever listened. He was such a fucking fool.

“Jaime?” Tyrion prompted.

“I’m sorry too,” Jaime said. He felt lighter, standing in just his clothing. He had taken off his hand, too. The stump was there, ugly and blank beneath the cover Sansa made for him. He was not the sort of man, anymore, to wear a golden hand. He didn’t want to be the sort of man to wear a steel hand, either. It was good for fighting, but it wasn’t good for anything else. It just weighed him down, like his armor had. It tethered him, kept him slumped and weary and separated from everyone else. A barrier around his softest parts. He didn’t want it any longer. “I should have stopped her,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” Tyrion said again. But that was wrong, and it only made Jaime angry. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

That was worse.

“You did,” Jaime said. “We both did. We knew _exactly_ what she would do to try and hold on to power. I should have tried harder to reach her. I should have been more open with her. I was afraid to say the wrong thing, and I failed. You should have talked Daenerys into waiting. You should have talked her into keeping those dragons far away from the city. Farther, so the horns couldn’t reach. You should have believed them about the horns. I should have _asked_ her about it. We should have sent Arya in.”

“We did the best we could,” Tyrion argued quietly, and Jaime shook his head. He kicked past his abandoned armor, moving closer to his brother. He always looked at Tyrion and saw the boy he used to be. _Always_. He always saw his little brother, the boy he needed to protect, the boy he loved. He didn’t see him now. Maybe it was the half-green light, or maybe it was the soot and ash in Tyrion’s beard and hair, making him look older. But it was the first time Jaime looked at Tyrion and saw a man who could make as many mistakes as Jaime himself did. The first time he looked at Tyrion and saw his father, and his sister, and his uncle. Tyrion was standing above, on the edge of the pit, and he loomed over Jaime, casting a shadow over him. Jaime felt like he was drowning in it.

“We never have,” he said, and Tyrion sighed and shook his head and seemed likely to argue. Jaime couldn’t hear it. “All our lives. All _my_ life. For my family.”

“Jaime, please,” Tyrion said, and Jaime understood.

“I don’t want to die,” he said, and Tyrion was looking at him, holding his breath. Terrified. Jaime felt that guilt welling up inside him. Old, now, after so much had happened. But he could remember well how guilty he felt when he lay in his bed at Highgarden and saw his little brother’s terror. “I don’t. This isn’t about that. This isn’t about _her_. It’s all of us. Father and Cersei and you and me. Only mother could have stopped us, I think. She was good. Or maybe I’m remembering wrong. Maybe she was as bad as the rest. Grasping at power and strength by tearing down everyone else around us. Who lives like that?”

“Everyone does, Jaime.”

“No. Not everyone.”

“Everyone in our circles,” Tyrion amended.

“ _Our circles_.” Jaime scoffed and turned to look at the heap of ashes.

“Everyone who plays the game,” Tyrion continued, like it mattered. Like any of it still mattered now. It hadn’t mattered at Winterfell. It hadn’t mattered when the dead were marching. It didn’t matter now. How could Tyrion not see it? All his cleverness. How could he not understand how little of it mattered in the end?

“Our legacy,” Jaime said. They’d had this conversation before, at Highgarden, but Tyrion hadn’t understood. Neither had Jaime, at the time. He hadn’t understood the crushing weight of it, the knowledge of everything that had come before. Tyrion didn’t see it because he didn’t want to. Because he wanted to live that legacy. Even as much as he had hated their father, he wanted to be able to make him proud. He’d _killed_ Tywin, and yet still he labored and schemed, and at the bottom of it all was Tywin. Tywin disapproving and stern and terrible. Not the kind of father any child would want, and not the kind of father any child could ever be good enough for.

“There’s still two of us left,” Tyrion said, and Jaime shook his head.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “But you’ve never been able to see that.”

Tyrion frowned, his face crumpling further, looking older, sadder, more worn down. Was that what Tyrion saw every time he looked at _him_? Probably. He felt it. He felt old down to his bones. He felt bled dry of everything that had once kept him standing. Pride. He’d lost that long ago, somewhere in the Riverlands with his sword hand. There was something in it that made him want to laugh. A lion without his pride. What was he without that?

_Ser Jaime_ , he thought, and it was _her_ voice he heard.

“You were always making excuses for me,” he found himself saying. “You were always so sure that I was doing things for the right reasons, even when you had to know that it was all for Cersei. Why didn’t you ever give up on me?”

Tyrion hesitated, and he still looked afraid, and he still looked old. _I don’t want to die_ , Jaime had said, and it was true, even as there were ways in which it was false. Yes, he didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to stop living. But there were parts of himself that he was ready to bury. He felt it choking him, weighing him down, drowning him. Like a cloak tangled up around his ankles. He wanted to tear it off. Send the golden lion pendant skittering across the floor. End it. Not his life, this time, but something else. He didn’t have the words, yet. Maybe he would never have the words for Tyrion. Tyrion couldn’t possibly understand. Jaime was the heir. He was the one that was supposed to make their father proud. And yet it was Tyrion who was always trying. Tyrion who was more like Tywin than any of them. Clever and ruthless. Still human, still not entirely Tywin, but he had _wanted_ it. Far more than Jaime ever had, he had wanted Casterly Rock, and he had wanted to be Lord Lannister. He wanted all of the things that Jaime had never cared anything for, and it was so unfair to him. To both of them, really. To be kept from the things they wanted most. It had nearly destroyed Jaime, the wanting. Had it nearly destroyed Tyrion, too? Had Tyrion secretly seethed with jealousy, all this time? Hating Jaime just a bit for not appreciating what Tyrion would have done anything to secure?

“I knew you would find your way,” Tyrion answered finally. And _there_ he was: the boy. Jaime’s little brother. Small and afraid and uncertain. No matter how old they got, he would always be a child, and Jaime would always be the big brother who wanted to make Tyrion smile. “I hoped you would, anyway. But it wouldn’t matter if you never did. Because you are my brother, and because I love you. Because there was no one else who showed me even half the love you showed me. It never mattered to me that you weren’t perfect. You were my big brother who would protect me and care about me when no one else would have cared if I lived or died.”

Tyrion made his way carefully down the rest of the way into the pit, and Jaime dropped to one knee so that he could hug him when Tyrion got close enough. Tyrion was crying. Jaime hadn’t been able to see it until Tyrion was practically already in his arms, but then he _could_ , and he could cry, too.

They stayed like that for a while. Tyrion muffled his tears in the skin of Jaime’s shoulder, and Jaime held him and did the same. It was odd how quiet things were in the ruins of the Red Keep. Jaime felt reborn again, like part of him _had_ died with Cersei after all. But it was a part of him that he no longer needed. Something shed and abandoned and not missed. _Free_ , he kept thinking, and he would feel guilt again for thinking it, but it was true. He felt free, and alone, and _so_ glad to still be alive. It hadn’t truly sunk in yet, the gladness, but he could feel it sparking somewhere inside him, behind all the grief and the fear and the exhaustion. He couldn’t truly be glad for anything yet. But when he closed his eyes, he no longer saw an endless blackness. A future that was too far out of reach to truly see. No, he closed his eyes and thought of the blue waters that surrounded Tarth. He thought of the peace of her eyes when they locked on his. He thought of the years that stretched before him. Years in which he would be free to love her as he wanted. Where there would be nothing to hold him back.

Nothing but himself. Nothing but his past.

“I don’t want it,” Jaime said. Speaking and breaking the silent grief and relief he and his brother were sharing. Tyrion pulled back to look at him, quizzical and tired and concerned. Jaime cupped Tyrion’s jaw in one hand, and he kept his stump on Tyrion’s shoulder. He could almost feel himself squeezing it. It was what he would have done, if he was whole. Sometimes he still forgot he wasn’t.

“What don’t you want, Jaime?” Tyrion finally asked. His eyes were red.

“The Rock,” Jaime said. He thought of his armor, piled behind him. “Any of it,” he continued. “I never did.”

“Jaime.”

“I was happy enough to give it up for Cersei, but it wasn’t only Cersei. I never wanted it. I never deserved it, maybe, but I don’t want it now. More than forty years. You know I was never happy with it. You were always the one trying to show me.”

“I just wanted it for myself,” Tyrion admitted quietly. He still looked worried. Jaime couldn’t figure it out. Maybe Tyrion just couldn’t understand it. Maybe that was why. He thought Jaime was having another break. He thought Jaime was walking away because he didn’t want to live anymore. But that wasn’t it. It was just that Jaime wasn’t the same Jaime anymore. He hadn’t been for a while, but he had tried. Shoved himself into boxes that made sense. He couldn’t do it anymore. The last thread to his old life had vanished, and this was a chance for something new. He knew exactly what he wanted to do with it.

“I’m going to tell your queen to give it to you,” he said.

“Jaime.”

“I don’t want it.”

“You keep saying that. But you’ll have a wife to provide for, remember?”

“Yes, my wife. A woman who famously gives half a shit about titles and lords and castles. A wife who doesn’t bring an entire beautiful island to the marriage herself.”

“Jaime, what is this?”

“It’s what I want,” Jaime answered. Tyrion still looked at him like he was mad. Maybe he was. Maybe by the standards of men and their rules and their pride, maybe Jaime _had_ lost what was left of his mind. He didn’t care. It felt right to give it up. It felt right to leave his Lannister armor behind and leave the ruins of the Red Keep a different man. _Ser Jaime_. Her voice again, inside his head. Proud to know him. Proud to have protected him, the way she sounded when he was set to leave Harrenhal. The first time she used his name like that. He could not say he loved her then, but maybe that was the start of it. The realization that he was not just _Kingslayer_ to her any longer. That she had found some honor in him. Maybe that was where it began, and maybe this was where it would end.

The last time his world shifted so sharply, he had tried to die, but this time was different. It was a soft shift. A gentle laying in a bed of flowers. He could understand why Tyrion was so frightened, but he felt very removed from his little brother’s fear. He still held that green stone in his hand. Sharp, biting into his skin as he clutched it. But small enough to carry.

He left his armor there, and the ashes that remained of his sister. He helped Tyrion out of the pit. And then he went to find Brienne.

* * *

She was washing up in her tent. He could see her through the open flap. Podrick was setting her armor on the stand, and he smiled when he saw Jaime approaching. Brienne looked, as always, softer and smaller without her armor, though still so sturdy in a way he found endlessly comforting. Even with all her insecurities and the way she had held him half an arm’s length away at Winterfell, she was still such a safe place to rest. Podrick shuffled quickly out of the tent with a murmured alert to Brienne, and Brienne wiped her face with a towel and then turned to face him. Her brow was furrowed, her mouth pulled into a frown. He thought she meant to scold him for not waiting outside until she was ready, but instead she said, “are you all right?” and he almost could not breathe for how hard his love for her punched him in the chest.

“Yes,” he said, and he touched her jaw, and her scarred cheek, and then he pressed himself close to kiss her. She kissed him in return, though she still wore that quizzical expression.

“Are you certain?” she asked. It was her turn to touch his face. She held it in both hands, peering at him. Wanting him to be all right. She still touched him like a question every time. _Is this all right? Is_ this _all right? Is this_? All of it was all right, but he knew that confidence would come in time. Eventually. One day. There was something beautiful in that. _One day._ He had never been a patient man, but he imagined it. Brienne growing bolder with him in time. Coming to understand what he liked and what he wanted and that he always liked and wanted _her_.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I love you.” She opened her mouth to respond in kind, but he was not finished, and he needed to get it out. Some swelling panic was forcing him to say everything at once. “I love you, and I wish to marry you. As soon as we can.”

“I’m…yes,” Brienne said, hesitant to show her heart too strongly. He wanted to smile at her, and found that his attempt felt twisted and false on his face. There was still that feeling inside him. A panic that had stolen over him in the ashes of the Red Keep and had not yet managed to fade completely. A desperation to escape.

“I don’t want your name to be Lannister,” he said. “If you have children, if _we_ have children, I don’t want them to carry my name.”

“Jaime,” she said, startled.

“We ruin everything we touch.”

“You don’t. _You_ didn’t. You’re a good man.”

“You can tell me that until my dying day, and the gods know I’m selfish enough to hope you do, but that won’t change how I feel right now. Your lands and titles, I want them to stay as yours. I love my brother. I do. But he is more Lannister than any of them, and I don’t want there to be any doubts. Tarth will be yours, and you will remain a Tarth.”

“And you?” she asked.

In his heart, deeply, he wanted to be as no one. He wanted to be a nameless hedge knight with one hand, forgotten. No name.

No, that wasn’t true. In his deepest heart, in the place he would not let anyone touch, he wanted the honor of a Tarth name. He wanted Tarth’s colors. He wanted to forget.

But he could not escape his past that way. It would be too easy. He was too old now to be remembered under any other name.

No matter what he called himself and no matter where he went, he would always be Jaime Lannister. _The Kingslayer._ Brienne had shielded him and protected him from many things over their acquaintance, and he had no doubt that she would continue to do so in their marriage, because Brienne was not a woman who gave up on people easily, even when they deserved it. But she could not save him from himself. His own family. His blood and his name and the ruthlessness of the ones who had made it notorious.

“I don’t know,” he answered instead. “It would be enough to know that I hadn’t ruined you completely.”

She softened when she looked at him. He had no doubt that she could see his panic, and the deep unhappiness he felt. He feared that she would think it all grief for Cersei, but if she _did,_ she didn’t say it.

“I just,” he said. He tried to think. His brain was all awhirl, tripping over itself. It was like he had gone away inside without meaning to, but there were no pleasant memories waiting for him there. Just darkness, blankness, a howling wind.

“Jaime,” Brienne said. Her low voice was as soothing as ever, and he remembered when she used to speak to him when he was near-incoherent and rambling with fever, after Locke took his hand. He only remembered the vaguest impressions of that time. He had been so near to death, and he had longed for it so fervently, but Brienne was there in all his memories, speaking to him in her rumbling murmur, her words indistinct but _kind_. So kind, and he had hated her so much, and he was so ashamed of himself for everything. For the shit and the blood and the vomit and the beastly way he had acted towards her when now she was the only bright spot in his life. Going away inside hadn’t helped then, either, because there was nowhere to go. His every happy memory had been forgotten in the face of his pain and his humiliation.

“I gave up Casterly Rock,” he said. “I doubt Tyrion will believe I meant it, but I did. I have no title. No lands. No gold anymore. Just…”

“Just _you_ ,” Brienne said. He could see the courage it took for her to brush her fingers through his hair. The way her fingers trembled because she was always afraid to show too much. He leaned into her touch and closed his eyes, and he knew it was some animal instinct. Some desire to be close to her. Some way of showing trust, maybe.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “Just me.”

“That’s enough.”

“You’re the first lady knight of Westeros. You served against the dead honorably. You served Lady Sansa, who will now control the north. You’re quite a catch, you know.”

“Are you trying to persuade me _not_ to marry you?”

“I love you. I want you to marry a good man who will deserve you.”

“So you think to push me to a man who desires to wed me for my fame and not because he loves me?” He opened his eyes, and she was looking at him with amusement. Open amusement. And. _Loves me_. Her casual acceptance of his feelings was _thrilling_. Her thumb brushed against the skin of his jaw, and he gripped her hand with his. “We can talk it over,” she said, slow and deliberate. “And come up with the best solution. My father would be relieved to hear that any children would carry the Tarth name. I don’t think it will be as difficult as you fear.”

“Thank you,” he said. “I just…after everything…”

“You and Tyrion remain.”

“I know. I shudder to think of it.”

“You’re two very fine men. Your father did his best to destroy Tyrion and to mold you into what he wanted, and he failed on both counts. You are not your father, and you are not your sister. You are your own person. You are _Jaime_ , and no matter what house you come from, and no matter what name you have, you are a good man.” He was smiling up at her, his wry, twisting grin, and she scowled down at him. “You look like you’re about to mock me.”

“No, my lady, he laughed. “Certainly not. But, gods. If only I had met you sooner.”

“You would have called me a hideous beast and I never would have spoken to you again.”

“But then I would have seen you fight, and it all would have worked out. You can’t convince me otherwise.”

Brienne struggled against a smile, but it was obvious that she was.

“Well, perhaps,” she said.

“You’re like a knight from a song. How could I not fall in love with you?”

He could tell that she wanted to say a thousand things. Remind him that his sister would still have been alive in this other life. Remind him that she would still be ugly. Remind him that he would still have both his hands. He watched her. He could see her struggling to fight back her own mind.

“You’re ridiculous,” she finally said. “But I suppose I might have loved you, too. Eventually.”

“Eventually,” Jaime agreed, and he felt the panic finally slipping away. The urge to flee lessening.

His name had become a poison to him, but it would not take Brienne down with him. She understood. She wanted him even when he had nothing to offer. She _loved_ him. The future would be one of rebuilding, and he was prepared to face that, as long as she was there, believing in him the way that she had for far longer than anyone else.

There was no need to go away inside, and there was no need to hide away. He was exactly where he was meant to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the songs for this chapter are Flecks by These Brittle Bones and Sticky Leaves by Linying


End file.
